Who doesn’t love gingerbread, it’s one of my favourite things to make with my kids. This recipe is really straight forward and easy for little people to do (pretty much) by themselves. I dug out my traditional witch, pumpkin, ghost and bat cookie cutters for this as well as making some wonderfully spooky skull biscuits inspired by the mexican day of the dead. The cutters for these are Sweet Spirit Cookie Cutters and were kindly sent to me by the lovely people from The Gift Oasis; they are a cutter on one side and a cookie stamp on the other, creating imprinted skull designs which you can leave plain or accentuate with icing. To decorate I used mini smarties, water icing and some icing tubes left over from the decorate your own cookie table at my son’s birthday party.

 Ingredients:

350g Plain flour

2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (this makes lovely soft biscuits – for crunchier biscuits reduce to 1tsp)

1 and a half tsp ground ginger

100g Butter

175g light muscavado sugar

4 tablespoons golden syrup (and a small dish of vegetable / corn oil to dip the spoon in)

1 egg (beaten)

mini smarties and icing sugar to decorate – plus gel colours if required

pre-heat the oven to 180c

Method:

• Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ginger into a bowl.
• Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
• Sieve in the sugar to remove any lumps then stir in.
• Dip your tablespoon in the oil to stop the golden syrup sticking then add the golden syrup to the egg and beat to combine.
• Gradually stir the syrup mixture into the dry ingredients.
• Mix into a smooth dough.
• Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and roll out.
• Cut out your biscuits and place on buttered baking trays.
• Cook in the preheated 180c for about 10 minutes or until golden brown.
• Cool on wire racks before decorating with water icing and smarties.

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