Gingerbread with homemade spices

Gingerbread cookies are traditional Christmas treat in many different countries. Partially because it used to be a very expensive treat since the gingerbread spice is quite exotic even today. While ginger, cinnamon and pepper are common nowadays, not everyone has allspice, clove, nutmeg and anise in their cupboard (well, I do now…). In fact, with all the spices, gingerbread in middle-ages used to be sold as medicine!

As with all other recipes on this site, I tested them and it worked on the first try. So you should be able to replicate it easily as well. So let’s start with spices:

Gingerbread spice mix

Ingredients

  • 2 spoons of ginger
  • 2 spoons of cinnamon
  • 1 spoon of clove
  • 1 spoon of allspice
  • 1/2 spoon of nutmeg
  • 1/2 (star) anise
  • pinch of pepper

Due to freshness, its always better to use whole ingredients (stick of cinnamon, balls of allspice, whole anise stars) and grind them yourself. But pre-grounded will do fine. Ginger, cinnamon and pepper will give it spicy flavour while cinnamon, clove, allspice and nutmeg sweetness. Careful with anise, it is VERY aromatic and you could easily ruin your mix if you put too much of it. But it goes away a bit after baking. If you prefer a specific flavour, you could add a little bit more of some ingredients.

Store resulting mix in an airtight container. This will last you for quite a bit batches since you will typically need only 2 teaspoons per batch. And now towards cookies!

Gingerbread cookies/men

According to what I am reading, industrial (and traditional) production need the dough to rest for several weeks, during which time the dough ferments a bit. After baking, the gingerbread cookies are hard as stone and need to soften for a week. This is because such expensive products required extremely long shell-life in middle-ages.

This recipe does not require anything of this sort. Cookies are consumable right from the oven, although I would suggest waiting a bit to let them cool down:).

There are many variants. I picked one with a relatively low percentage of butter and sugar.

Ingredients

For one batch of gingerbread cookies, you will need:

Dough

  • 300 g flour
  • 100 g icing sugar
  • 50 g butter (room temperature)
  • 2 eggs
  • 2-3 spoons of honey (liquid, not creamed)
  • 1-2 spoons of cocoa powder (for colour)
  • 2 teaspoons of gingerbread spice mix
  • 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda (or powder)

Smear

  • 1 egg yolk
  • milk of water

Icing

  • 150 g icing sugar
  • egg white
  • 1-2 spoons of lemon

Directions

  • Mix dry ingredients (flour, icing sugar, cocoa powder, gingerbread spice mix, baking soda)
  • Add butter and work it into the dough so there are no clumps. Then add honey and eggs.
  • If the dough is too wet and sticky, add a bit flour. Repeat until the dough is workable and refrigerate.
  • On non-sticky surface, roll the dough using a rolling pin to about 3 mm.
  • Take cookie cutters and cut various shapes. Put them into baking trace (with baking paper)
  • Collect cutoffs and repeat previous steps.
  • Mix egg yolk with few drops of water and smear (I am almost sure that this is not the correct term) cookies. This will give them a nice glaze. This step is common in almost all Czech baking, but I cannot find it in English one, so sorry if I am using an incorrect word for this.
  • Bake on 180°C for 10 minutes.

Decorating

  • Prepare icing out of icing sugar, lemon juice and egg white. Add more sugar if the icing is still too liquid.
  • You can divide the icing into smaller portions and colour them with food colouring!
  • Put the icing into a piping bag with a small tip. You can also use a normal plastic bag or food wrap. But these solutions are less ideal (you will have smaller control over them and they may tear).
  • Use this bag for drawing various shapes and decoration. If you want to cover the whole surface, dilute icing with a few drops of water (but first create edges with undiluted icing). You can also use a toothpick or small brush. Icing will become hard once it dries on air.