Cookies for Isaac

My friend’s son turned 5 yesterday, so I made him these number 5 cookies for his birthday. I made my favourite gingerbread biscuit recipe from Annabel Langbein’s book which she wrote in conjunction with the City Cake Company. The recipe is great as the dough is always the perfect consistency for rolling, without having to chill the dough (which can be annoying!) and the biscuits are always crispy. I think the trick is cooking the biscuits on the tray rather than on a rack.

This time I replaced the ginger with cinnamon, so they weren’t too spicy for little kids. Other times when I have run out of ginger, I have used half cinnamon and half mixed spice. You could even leave the spices out if you like a plain biscuit. I have been asked before what to use instead of golden syrup (it isn’t a common ingredient in the States) and I think I would use either maple syrup or a light molasses in these cookies.

I iced the cookies with just a simple icing made from icing sugar and water and coloured it blue with blue colouring gel. I iced them in the evening and then next morning they had taken on this mottled appearance – this may have been because of the amount of colouring I used, but I quite like the look for something a bit different. To save time I painted the icing on with a paint brush. Don’t forget that the cookies will soften a bit once iced. These are great cookies for a child’s birthday party!



Gingerbread Cookies (from Sweet Indulgence by Annabel Langbein)

150g butter
1/3 c brown sugar
3 tbsp golden syrup
1 ½ tsp baking soda dissolved in 1 ½ tsp boiling water
2 ¼ flour
3 tsp ground ginger

· Cream butter and sugar; then beat in syrup, then dissolved soda
· Stir in flour and ginger to make a soft dough
· Roll out to about ½ cm thick and cut into shapes
· Bake at 170 for 12-15 minutes and cool on tray
Decorate with royal icing once cold