Baking
57 recipes
One of our favourite family baking sessions ever - all three kids had a pile of dough each, a rolling pin and counter space to cut out all these cookies. And out of the oven come delicious, fluffy gingerbread!
The orange blossom water is a nice touch, however you can substitute with the rind and juice of orange which will work beautifully too.
You must choose your favourite honey as it does hum in the background - you could replace some or all of it with maple syrup, or rice malt syrup. I might try half maple, half honey next.
Great for Christmas baking of course but my son loves gingerbread anytime and the big batch was perfect for home-made lunchbox treats.
Makes around 30 biscuits.
Pictured: Gingerbread biscuits with orange blossom icing
Ingredients
- 125g softened butter
- 65g brown sugar – about ½ cup firmly packed
- 1 tsp orange blossom water or 2 tsp orange rind
- 1 egg
- 125g/ ½ cup honey, warmed
- 450g/ 3 cups self-raising flour
- 1 tbsp ground ginger
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 egg, lightly beaten, extra
- Orange Blossom Icing
- 160g/ 1 cup icing sugar, sifted
- 1 tsp orange blossom water, or replace with orange or lemon juice
- 1 tbsp water
- Once softened, cream the butter with the brown sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy.
- Add the egg and orange blossom water/orange rind and whisk again til smooth.
- Using a spoon, fold in the warmed honey.
- Sift together the flour and spices and on a slow setting, gently beat into the mixture until it is just combined and forms a dough.
- With your hands, bring the dough together and form a disc to wrap it in plastic and let firm up in the fridge for ½ hour.
- Once dough is firm and cool, preheat the oven to 170°C. Have two trays ready with baking paper.
- Roll out dough in batches with some plain flour sprinkled on bench and on the rolling pin – to around 5mm thick. Use your favourite cookie cutters to cut out biscuits and place a few CMS apart on the trays.
Method
Whisk the extra egg and brush all over the tops of the biscuits.
Bake 10 minutes on shelf just above the halfway. Check after 8 minutes, the biscuits will be golden once they are ready.
Remove the biscuits and let cool a few minutes on trays before transferring to a wire rack.
Once cool you can ice them – mix the orange blossom water into the icing sugar and add half the water, mix and keep adding tiny drops of water until you have the right consistency – you can pipe the mixture carefully to decorate or spread with fun over the biscuits however you like! Let the icing set before placing in an airtight container.
The biscuits will keep in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.
Dietary preferences
- Vegetarian
