Annabel Karmel's gingerbread mummies and skeletons
Little ghosts and ghouls can help their mummies make these frightfully tasty treats!
Total time
Prep time
Amount
25 - 30 biscuits
Ingredients
- 140g/4¾oz chilled unsalted butter (diced)
- 100g/3½oz soft dark brown sugar
- 300g/11oz plain flour plus extra for dusting
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 2 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- ½ tsp mixed spice
- ½ tsp ground allspice
- 1 egg
- beaten 50g/2oz black treacle
- 50g/2oz golden syrup
- ½ tsp fine salt
- icing sugar for dusting
- 300g/11oz ready-made white fondant icing
- white icing pen
- edible eyes
- 200g/7oz icing sugar
- Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas 4 and line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment.
- Put the butter, sugar, flour, spices and bicarbonate of soda in a food processor and blitz until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
- Whisk the egg, black treacle, syrup and salt in a bowl. Add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients in the food processor and blitz briefly until combined. Transfer the mixture to a clean work surface and knead to form a soft dough. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes.
- Roll the chilled dough out on a floured work surface to the thickness of a £1 coin then stamp out 25-30 gingerbread men, re-rolling the dough as necessary.
- Place the gingerbread men on the lined baking sheets then chill for 10 minutes.
- Bake the chilled gingerbread men in the oven for 15 minutes until lightly browned and firm. Remove from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool.
- For the gingerbread mummies, dust a work surface with a little icing sugar and roll out the icing until thin. Slice 5mm/¼ in strips of icing to make bandages to make the gingerbread men look like mummies. Attach edible eyes to the cookies using an icing pen; then arrange the lengths of white icing strips as bandages on half of the gingerbread men, trimming the icing as necessary.
- For the gingerbread skeletons, mix the icing sugar with a little water until it has a smooth, thick consistency. Spoon the icing into a piping bag fitted with a small round nozzle. Pipe white lines onto the remaining undecorated gingerbread men to make the bones of the skeleton, holding the piping bag at a 45-degree angle just above the gingerbread and squeezing the icing with a constant pressure. Don't move the piping bag until the icing has met the surface. Leave to set for 30 minutes.
- The undecorated cookies can be frozen for up to 2 months. Defrost at room temperature.