In need of some sugar and spice? Treat yo’self to these aromatic gingerbread-esque cookies. They’re quick and easy to make, and are great as homemade, personalised gifts this winter. Will you save these as late-night snacks with a cup of tea, or gift them to a friend with pumpkin spice withdrawal symptoms?
Ingredients (makes about 20 discs):
- 175g plain flour (plus extra to roll)
- 50g butter
- 2 tsp ginger
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 85g light brown soft sugar
- 2 tbsp golden syrup or honey
- 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
- 1 egg
- 2 colours of fondant
- icing sugar to roll
- gold piping gel
- glitter to decorate
Method:
- Pre-heat oven to 180°C
- Combine all the dry ingredients (flour, ginger, cinnamon, bicarbonate of soda and sugar) in a large mixing bowl
- Add the wet ingredients (golden syrup or honey, vanilla essence and egg) to the mixture and combine well
- Soften the butter in the microwave and use your finger tips to rub the butter into the mixture as best as you can – you’re aiming for a squishy crumb-like consistency
- Use your hands to gather the crumbs in the mixing bowl and pack together to form a dough
- Dust a surface and rolling pin with flour, then roll the dough out to the thickness of a £1 coin
- Use a round cutter to cut out discs of the dough and place on a lined baking tray
- Bake for 10 minutes and check, but they’ll likely need an extra 2 minutes (they should be golden brown in colour and shouldn’t be rock hard – they’ll harden as they cool)
- Warm up the fondant in your hands to soften it – use 2 shades of the same colour
- Roll the two colours into sausage shapes and twist them together before rolling them out (on a surface lightly dusted with icing sugar) to create a marble effect
- Use the same cutter to cut out discs of the marble fondant
- Make a simple icing to glue the fondant discs to the cookie discs (add a drop of water to some icing sugar) when the cookies have cooled
- Use gold piping gel to monogram your cookies – if you have a fine nib you can probably do 2 initials on each cookie, but I could only fit 1 letter on each
- Dust your monogram cookies with glitter (obviously)