Ok, I broke the rule of not baking ever again :sigh: Instead of my 45 minutes yoga session I was burying my head in doing gingerbread man. The recipe I got is from The Great British Kitchen, which, judging by the name, has to be the most original. So I followed the instructions:
Ingredients
"Serves: 16
350 Gram Plain flour (12 oz)
1 Teaspoon Bicarbonate of soda
2 Teaspoon Ground ginger
110 Gram Butter, diced (4 oz)
175 Gram Soft light brown sugar (6 oz)
4 Tablespoon Golden syrup
1 Egg, beaten
Currants, to decorate
Method
Makes 16
Pre-heat oven to 190 °C / 375 °F / Gas 5.
Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ginger into a mixing bowl. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs, then stir in the sugar. Beat the syrup into the egg, then stir into the flour mixture. Mix together to make a smooth dough. Knead the dough until smooth, then divide in half. Roll out, half at a time, on a floured surface until about 5 mm ( 1/4 inch) thick.
Using a gingerbread man cutter, cut out gingerbread men until all the dough has been used up, re-rolling and cutting the trimmings. Repeat with the second half of the dough. Place the gingerbread men on greased baking sheets and decorate with currants to represent eyes and buttons. Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown. Leave on the baking sheets to cool slightly, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Store in an airtight container."
Two things I notice:
1) baking at 190C is far too high, which resulted in half of my men (the ones on the inner part of the oven) being totally black and completely unpalatable.
2) the stated amount of sugar is far too sweet for my likings, so next time I would prefer to cut it down by half.
Except for the small incident of cremating half of my men, this little baking job has shown me that with a little bit of patience and COMMON SENSE, I can get back to learning to bake again...
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