Caro From The Twinkle Diaries Shares Her Step-By-Step Recipe
Aaaah December — the jewel in winter’s crown. All the glitter and sparkle of the festive season is the perfect antidote to those drab gray days. Our house is dressed in it’s finest party-wear. There are fairy lights adorning every surface, and the air is heavy with the smell of gingerbread. This year, I’ve taken inspiration from one of my favourite new Christmas decorations; a little robin print from Laura Ashley. These are delicious snow globe cookies the whole family will love.
Gingerbread cookies are brilliant at any time of year, but especially at Christmas. The aroma of treacle and spices, as they’re cooking, is so festive. It’s the best kind of scent to welcome guests into your home. These little Christmas themed cookies are perfect to serve up to hungry visitors too, or boxed up to give as gifts (if you can manage to part with them!)
Gingerbread Cookies
You will need:
7/8 Cup all-purpose flour
½ Teaspoon baking powder
1/4 Cup dark brown sugar
½ Teaspoon ground ginger
3 ½ Tablespoons salted butter softened and diced
½ Teaspoon cinnamon
2 ½ Tablespoons black treacle/molasses
½ Teaspoon British mixed spice
Preheat the oven to 350 F degrees before you begin making your biscuits or when ready to cook.
Sift the flour, baking powder and all the spices into a mixing bowl. Add the sugar and mix well. Add butter. Using just the tips of your fingers, rub the ingredients together until they resemble fine breadcrumbs.
When all the butter is evenly mixed in, make a well in the centre and add the treacle/molasses. Bring the mixture together to form a soft dough, combining lightly until it has an even colour with not too many streaks of molasses (I did this bit in the mixer to avoid handling it). Lightly form into a ball. Divide into two and squash it into two even-sized flat discs.
Place one disc of dough on a sheet of baking parchment. Begin by gently squashing the dough down with the rolling pin or your hands, cover with a second sheet of parchment then use the rolling pin to roll properly. If the top sheet crinkles, just peel it off, smooth it down gently and start rolling again.
Transfer the sheet of rolled dough, still sandwiched between its parchment, to a baking tray and place in the fridge to chill for at least 20-30 minutes before cutting. Repeat the process with the rest of the dough.
Using your cutter, cut out the cookies as close together as possible, lifting each one on to a parchment-covered baking tray and making sure that they are not too close together, as the dough will spread a little on baking.
Evenly space the trays in the oven and bake for 10-16 minutes, depending on your oven. Keep a close eye on the first couple of batches you cook until you get used to the recipe and your oven (mine cook in just 10 minutes on the top oven rack).
To decorate the cookies, you’ll need some royal icing. There are many recipes on the internet — all showing various quantities — but I make mine like this:
Royal Icing
You will need:
4 ½ Cups icing sugar
1 Egg white
1 Teaspoon of lemon juice
Water (as needed)
Food colouring gels
Beat the egg white with a whisk or mixer until it goes frothy. Then add the lemon juice, followed by the sifted icing sugar spoon by spoon, on a high speed until you have the desired consistency.
I make my lining icing the consistency of toothpaste. The above icing recipe was perfect for this but you can add a little water to make sure you have the right consistency. Next add your food colouring to the icing and mix well.
Decorating Your Cookies
Spoon the icing into a plastic piping bag and snip the end off. Not too much though, you want your lines to be small and neat!
Pipe a thin line around the edge of the cookie first, then leave to dry for 10 minutes. To flood the background of the cookies, water down the icing with a little more water. This makes it much easier to work with, as it’s not a thick consistency. You can use a toothpick to move the icing into all of the corners.
Once the backgrounds are dry — it’s worth leaving them overnight (if you can wait that long!) — you can begin to add your details to the cookies. Use the same icing consistency that you used for the outlines.
Create as many dots and squiggles as you like! And you can also add sweets, sprinkles, and edible glitter too.
As I wanted to recreate the little robin in cookie form, I used food-colouring to handpaint the little robins on to the front of each one. I enjoy water-colour painting, and this was kind of the same thing. It was so therapeutic!
Once the robins had dried, I finished off the cookies with little dots of piped icing, to look like snow. A plate full of festive biscuits, inspired by some of my favourite decorations. Browse the Laura Ashley Holiday Shop for your own decor inspiration!
We’d love to see your cookie creations! Tag us in them over on our Instagram, or comment below with tips for making your own.