The wonderful fragrance of spices, interwoven with the aroma of sweet pastries, fills the house with magic and a premonition of the holiday! And the fabulous sugar patterns on gingerbread remind frosty windows in frost paintings ... Even if it is not winter weather outside, creating delicious beauty will fill your home with New Year's mood and waiting for miracles!
Making and decorating Christmas gingerbread with glaze is a creative, exciting activity for everyone, young and old. Households will postpone phones and tablets, gather in the kitchen and will try with might and main, and then treat each other with the fruits of their labors ... and what could be more important than distracting from the everyday hustle and bustle and feel like one family, fun and friendly! It is from such sweet, good traditions that a real holiday begins. Such family habits are remembered by children after years, when they become adults and the family gathers again in a cozy kitchen to prepare for the New Year and bake gingerbread!
Let us and we have a pleasant and tasty tradition. Homemade gingerbread cookies are easy, fun and fun to make! Zate the whole family romp with fragrant dough and curly molds; Bake many, many New Year's gingerbread, and then paint them together together with icing sugar - there will be a treat, and decoration of the festive sweet table, and gifts for friends and family!
Products need a minimum, and a lot of gingerbread! This portion is designed for 15-20 pieces, depending on the size. If you wish, you can double or even triple the number of ingredients to make 30-35 or 45-50 pieces.
Ingredients for Christmas Gingerbread with Frosting
- 30-35 g of butter;
- 100 g of sugar;
- 1 tbsp. l honey
- 1 large egg;
- 1 tsp. baking soda (without top);
- 260-280 g of wheat flour;
- 0, 5 tsp. ground ginger;
- 1/4 tsp. cinnamon;
- 1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg;
- 1/8 tsp. ground cloves;
- 1/6 tsp. turmeric
Method of making New Year's gingerbread with glaze
For gingerbread we prepare choux honey dough according to the same recipe as for honey cake. If you do not begin to add spices, and roll out the dough in the form of thin cakes, you will get the basis for a honey cake. And if you roll it thicker and add spices, you get gingerbread - because they are called so!
The combination of spices listed in the ingredients gives the baking a nice light brown hue and a delicious aroma. When it is frosty and snowy outside the window, it is very appropriate to have a delicacy with ginger, which strengthens the immune system, and cinnamon, which protects against colds. And turmeric, important for a strong memory, and nutmeg, which harmonizes mood, are good in any season. So gingerbread - just the recipe, where tasty combined with useful!
In a non-stick saucepan, put the butter, sugar and honey. Putting on a tiny light or a water bath, heat, stirring, until the ingredients melt.
In the other tank, meanwhile, beat the egg with soda to the pomp.
In the melted mixture, without removing the saucepan from the heat, pour in the whipped mass and quickly mix. The mixture begins to foam, slowly rising, like boiling milk - soda reacted with honey. Therefore, in this recipe does not need to extinguish the soda with vinegar.
Honey is sweet to the taste, but it is an acidic environment, as it contains many acids: malic, dairy, acetic, formic ... Because honey does not deteriorate during long-term storage. For the same reason, it extinguishes soda as effectively as lemon juice or vinegar. And heating enhances the reaction, during which bubbles of carbon dioxide are emitted, ensuring the pomp of the test.
As soon as the mixture is foamed, remove it from the heat and begin to gradually sift the flour, mixing the dough with a spoon. At first, it is quite liquid and very hot, but as it is kneaded it becomes thick and pleasantly warm, so you can proceed to kneading with your hands. Together with flour we add spices to the dough - delightful aromas are immediately spread around the kitchen!
The dough turns fragrant, light brown, moderately soft. You should not make it cool, as for dumplings - then it will be difficult to roll. But it should not be too soft either, otherwise the figures will begin to blur. Put the bun of the finished dough on the table, sprinkled with flour, and wait a minute: if the dough keeps its shape or blends just a little, it means that there is enough flour. Preheat oven to 200 ºC.
Roll out the dough with a thickness of 1 cm and cut out the figures with molds. Put them on a baking sheet, sprinkled with flour or covered with a sheet of parchment, greased with vegetable oil.
Cut the dough into pieces again, roll out and cut out the second batch of gingerbread: you need to work quickly with the choux pastry while it is warm, because as it cools, it becomes not so plastic.
We bake gingerbread at 200 ºC for 15-20 minutes. When they become more luxuriant, taller, they will turn golden brown in color, and the wooden skewer will remain dry when you sample the dough - ready!
We cool the gingerbread on a flat surface, and in the meantime we make icing to decorate them, mixing the icing sugar with lemon juice. Add the juice little by little, controlling the consistency of the glaze: it should be thick enough so that the patterns do not blur.
Fill the pastry bag with icing, you can take the usual sandwich cake, but it's much more convenient to use a special one. Cut the tip of the corner and paint the cooled gingerbread patterns as you like!
Let's wait about 20-30 minutes for the frosting to completely freeze, and the painted New Year's gingerbread custard dough with frosting is ready!
