Overview
I love gingerbread. Our family Christmas gingerbreads (piparkuki) are different – these ones are more your everyday gingerbread. I’m watching what I eat at the moment, but I needed to make these when I got me new Latvian symbol cutters… then I ate most of them! Yum. At least I left off the icing. #healthy

Time
8 minutes per batch – nice and quick!

Ingredients
125g butter
75g brown sugar
175g syrup (1:1 golden syrup and treacle)

2-2½ cups plain flour
2 ts ground ginger
2 ts cinnamon
½ ts cloves
2 ts bicarb soda

1 egg, lightly beaten
1 ts vanilla extract

Optional: Royal icing
1 egg white
1 cup icing sugar (160g)
Drops of food colouring as required

Equipment
Baking sheets, cookie cutters

Method
Preheat oven to 170° C

1 – Place butter, sugar and syrup in a small bowl. Microwave on high for 1 minute until butter has melted. Stir, then set aside to cool for 5 minutes.

2 – Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl until combined.

3 – Roll dough out to 5mm thickness on a floured surface. Cut shapes (use your coolest ones!) and arrange on a baking tray. Decorate with mini M&Ms, choc chips or whatever you want.

4 – Bake for 8 minutes. Cool on the trays.

5 – Make royal icing by beating the egg white until frothy. Gradually add sifted icing sugar while beating until stuff peaks form. Tint as desired and decorate cooled biscuit. Me? I prefer them without the icing!