Food Friday #1
For me there is no real Christmas feeling without the smell of freshly baked gingerbread cookies. Of course it would be extremly magical if it would be snowing while you're baking them, but it's not always possible. It has been snowing once this season here where I live, but it melt away pretty soon.I thought that I would share my ultimate gingerbread dough recipe that I have been using past couple of years and it turns out beautifully every single time. No fuss!
There's couple of things you need to keep in mind though- do NOT use the gingerbread dough directly. It needs some time to "marinate" and take in all the fabulous spices that you're using. I wouldn't recommend you to use it until first 48h has passed. So basically when you plan to bake gingerbread cookies on Sunday, make the dough ahead of time some time on Friday. Ready made dough keeps in fridge up to two weeks very beautifully and this recipe gives you roughly 1,2 kg of dough. It's complitely fine to freeze the dough if you don't plan to bake it in upcoming two weeks. I divided it into two small plastic bags and one of the bags was enough for 4-5 cookie plates of gingerbread cookies.
It seems that the ingridient list is long, but believe me, you'd be surprised if you find most of the things at home already.
2dl of dark syrup
2dl of sugar (I used coconut sugar, but you can use whatever you have in hand)
1 tbs cinnamon powder
1 tbs cardamom powder
1 tsp ginger powder
2 tsp clove powder
250 g of butter (the real butter, not anything else)
2 eggs
2 tsp baking soda
600 g wheat flour
So here's what you need to do:
Take a small pot and add dark syrup, sugar, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger and clove powder to it. Mix and warm on medium high heat until you see it bubbling. Then take the pot off from heat and mix in all of the butter that you have sliced earlier. Let the butter melt and then mix. DO NOT put the mixture back on heat! While you wait the butter to melt you can measure the flour into a big bowl and mix it with baking soda. When the syrup mixture has cooled down about ten minutes and it's not steaming, bubbling hot anymore then you can quickly whip in those eggs, but be careful that the mixture is not too warm so the eggs will crumble. Then it's time to combine the two mixtures. I find it easier to use fork to mix than spatula. Voilá! You can now storage the dough in a box or plastic bag. I waited until the dough had complitely cooled down until I put it in the fridge. It took me about 15- 20 minutes to make it so I find it really simple and not time consuming at all and the best part is that it is good to use quite a long time.
PS. I baked my cookies in 200C for 7-8 minutes, but really it depends on how thick or big you make your cookies, I had pretty small and thin ones. Keep an eye on your cookie baking time.
What is Your favorite Christmas scent?
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