Usually I make gingerbread men to take to our neighbours, but this year I obviously wanted to feel under a little more pressure, and decided to make miniature gingerbread houses instead.
They are soooo cute!
My gingerbread recipe is:-
125g butter
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 cup golden syrup
1 egg yolk
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in golden syrup and egg yolk. Stir in dry ingredients (flour, ginger and soda bicarb).
2. Press into a ball, knead on lightly floured surface until smooth. Refrigerate for 30 mins.
3. Roll dough between sheets of greaseproof paper. Cut gingerbread shapes from dough. Place shapes about 3cm apart on lightly greased oven trays.
4. Bake in moderately hot oven (180 degrees Celsius) for about 8 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on trays.
Royal Icing:
1 egg white
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
food colouring (optional)
Mix all ingredients together. You may need more icing sugar, as it needs to be quite stiff if you want to use this on mini gingerbread houses.
Here's the link to the pattern for the miniature gingerbread houses: http://images.transcontinentalmedia.com/canadianliving/food/gingerbreadcutouts.pdf
It suggests doing these as a gingerbread house party. What a great idea!
(the image is from the Canadian Living gingerbread house party suggestion)
