Last week, Bruce and I had so much fun baking loads of Christmas cookies. I haven't actually baked any cookies since I was a child and it was a real treat for me because it brought back so many lovely memories of stuffing my face full baking with my mother and grandmother. These gingerbread stars are actually ones that Bruce made, and they are so moreish, he needs to hide them away from me or I'll just eat all 100 of them in one go.
For the next week, I'm just going to post a few quick posts with some of my favourite Christmas cookies. They're so easy to make, and are perfect as gifts, either dusted with a bit of icing sugar or coated in icing - everyone so far has absolutely loved them. Simple. Sweet. Sexy.
I also paid another little visit to the German Christmas market last week (my 4th visit in the past 2 weeks) just for their irresistible bratwurst, little piggy that I am to finally take a few pictures of it all as it was such a gorgeous day. If you haven't been yet, I urge you to go as it all is very German, and it's just one of those things that completes Christmas for me.
Click image above to enlarge
If you'd liked this, you might like my other Christmas cookies.
Gingerbread Stars (click HERE for a printable version)
Makes roughly 100 stars, depending on the size of your cookie cutter (ours was 5cm across)
Ingredients:
130g butter
4 tbsp golden syrup
110g muscovado sugar
330g plain flour
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1. Preheat oven to 170˚C and line two or three baking trays with baking paper.
2. Place the butter, sugar and syrup in a pan and melt together over a medium heat.
Place to one side.
3. Mix flour, ginger and bicarbonate of soda in a bowl and add the melted mixture to the dry ingredients. Mix well until a ball of dough forms in the bowl.
4. Roll out the dough onto a floured surface to whatever thickness you'd like (they do rise slightly in the oven, so the thinner the better, roughly 5mm). Use the cookie cutter to cut out your desired shapes. (Quick tip: it helps if you dip the cutters into a bowl of water between each use).
5. Place cookies onto the paper-lined baking tray and bake for roughly 10 minutes or until golden brown. Don't worry if the cookies feel soft to the touch right after they come out of the oven, they do harden once they cool down.
