Spiced with ginger, cinnamon and clove these gingerbread biscuits will fill your house with the smells of Christmas as they cook – and taste delicious at any time of year. They’re also simple to make, taking around 40 minutes to cook, and can be cut into a variety of shapes. Decorate them with icing and cachous and you’ll have the perfect treat or gift for the holidays.
Ingredients
Method
Preheat oven to 180°C (60°C fan-forced), grease and line oven trays.
Combine butter, sugar and golden syrup in small saucepan, stir over low heat until smooth. Cool 5 minutes.
Sift flour, spices and soda into large bowl, add butter mixture, egg and extract, stir until combined.
Knead dough on floured surface until smooth. Roll dough between sheets of baking paper to 5mm thickness, refrigerate 10 minutes.
Using round-heart-and star-shaped cutters, cut out shapes from dough, place on trays.
Bake about 10 minutes or until browned. Cool on trays.
Meanwhile, make royal icing. Beat egg whites in small bowl with electric mixer until frothy, gradually beat in sifted icing sugar, a tablespoon at a time, until stiff peaks form. Tint icing as desired. Keep icing covered with a damp cloth, or enclosed tightly in plastic piping bags, the icing will develop a crust once it’s exposed to the air.
Decorate biscuits by spreading or piping with royal icing, decorate with cachous.
Test Kitchen tips
- After separating the egg whites for this recipe, you can refrigerate the egg yolks in an airtight container with a bit of cold water for 2-3 days. You can use them for recipes including custard, mayonnaise and lemon curd.
- If you want to make these gingerbread biscuits into different shapes but don’t have a cutter for it, you could create a template from cardboard (as suggested for our gingerbread cookie houses).
- To make a quick piping bag for the icing, snip off a corner of a small plastic bag.
Are gingerbread biscuits good for you?
Ginger is a key ingredient in gingerbread biscuits and has been used for centuries as a herbal medicine. Research has also shown that ginger may be beneficial for digestion, nausea, inflammation and metabolism. But gingerbread biscuits also have other ingredients, such as sugar and butter, that are better eaten in moderation as part of a healthy, balanced diet. So perhaps the biggest benefit of gingerbread biscuits is the joy they can bring when you make and share them.
What is the difference between gingerbread and ginger biscuits?
Gingerbread is softer than some other ginger biscuits, such as gingernuts, although some people might consider gingerbread a type of ginger biscuit. One other big difference between the two is that gingerbread is probably best known as a Christmas treat – whether it’s in biscuit form, shaped like people or built into an edible house – while other ginger biscuits could be eaten any time without the same association.
