One of our favourite, family baking sessions ever - all three kids had a pile of dough each, a rolling pin and counter space to cut out all these cookies. And out of the oven come delicious, fluffy gingerbread!
The orange blossom water was a nice touch as I already had some in the pantry, however adding an orange tang with rind and juice will work beautifully too. You must choose your favourite honey as it does hum in the background - you could replace some or all of it with maple syrup, or rice malt syrup as well. I will try half maple, half honey next.
Great for Christmas baking of course but my son loves gingerbread anytime and the big batch was perfect for home-made lunchbox treats.
Pictured: Gingerbread Biscuits with Orange Blossom Icing125g softened butter
65g brown sugar – about ½ cup firmly packed
1 tsp orange blossom water or 2 tsp orange rind
1 egg
125g/ ½ cup honey, warmed
450g/ 3 cups self-raising flour
1 tbsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground cinnamon
1 egg, lightly beaten, extra
Orange Blossom Icing
160g/ 1 cup icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp orange blossom water, or replace with orange or lemon juice
1 tbsp water
Once softened, cream the butter with the brown sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy.
Add the egg and orange blossom water/orange rind and whisk again til smooth.
Using a spoon, fold in the warmed honey.
Sift together the flour and spices and on a slow setting, gently beat into the mixture until it is just combined and forms a dough.
With your hands, bring the dough together and form a disc to wrap it in plastic and let firm up in the fridge for ½ hour.
Once dough is firm and cool, preheat the oven to 170°C. Have two trays ready with baking paper.
Roll out dough in batches with some plain flour sprinkled on bench and on the rolling pin – to around 5mm thick. Use your favourite cookie cutters to cut out biscuits and place a few cms apart on the trays.
Whisk the extra egg and brush all over the tops of the biscuits.
Bake 10 minutes on shelf just above the half way. Check after 8 minutes, the biscuits will be golden once they are ready.
Remove the biscuits and let cool a few minutes on trays before transferring to a wire rack.
Once cool you can ice them – mix the orange blossom water into the icing sugar and add half the water, mix and keep adding tiny drops of water until you have the right consistency – you can pipe the mixture carefully to decorate or spread with fun over the biscuits however you like! Let the icing set before placing in an airtight container.
The biscuits will keep in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.
Makes around 30 biscuits.