Gingerbread Snowflakes

We are back from two wonderful weeks in Sweden - we visited Stockholm, Örebro and Uppsala. We had a fantastic time catching up with old friends and making some new ones.

Here is a recipe for the gingerbread snowflakes I made for my birthday dinner a few weeks ago. Actually I used the same recipe I did for the gingerbread Christmas tree back in December, but I think they are quite a bit cuter than the christmas tree.

I'll just post it here again:

You will need:

• 1/2 cups of brown sugar
• 130 g unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup golden syrup (or treacle)
• 1 egg, separated
• 3 cups of plain flour
• 1 1/2 tbsp ground ginger
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tbsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp bicarb soda
• 200 g icing sugar
• Snow flake cutter

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Combine your butter and sugar in a mixing bowl and when smooth separate your egg and add the yoke into the mix and combine. Combine in the golden syrup.

Sift in the flour, bi carb soda and spices and combine with the rest of the mixture.

Knead into a smooth ball and wrap in cling wrap and then place in the fridge for at least an hour, but I would recommend a couple of days so the spicy flavours thoroughly infuse the dough.

After at least an hour (I left mine in the fridge over night), take the dough from the fridge and lightly dust a clean surface with some plain flour and well as lightly dusting your rolling pin with flour as well.

Take a little of your dough and roll it until it is fairly thin, no more that about 4 mm high and put them on trays covered in baking paper and place them in the oven for about 10 minutes until they are golden brown.

Repeat for the remaining dough.

Once the biscuits have cooled, it is time to ice them.

For the icing put your leftover egg white to good use by using an electric mixer to mix it until it forms fairly stiff peaks and then sift in the icing sugar and combine. Add in a couple of drops of food colouring if you like. I used a couple of different bowls and added red to one, blue to another and left another white.

The icing part took me a looooong time to get the hang of - not only to get the correct consistency for the icing (add more icing sugar for finer details), but also to be able to ice without the snowflakes looking like they had been iced by someone who had just had 7 bottles of vodka. Finally after about 10 biscuits that looked so ugly I made Geoff eat them so they would not see the light of day, I got the hang of it.

I am looking forward to making more soon to practice my icing skills (and because they are delicious!)