Gingerbread men, snails and bears

After trawling the internet for some time I finally came across a gingerbread recipe that sounded like a winner. I love really spicy gingerbread and came across this recipe. I read through some of the 600+ comments and decided to add a bit more spice and flour and use brown sugar instead of white.

Results: quite a dry, crumbly dough prior to refrigeration. I used my hands to mix it thoroughly. After it's time in the fridge it seemed a lot moister and was fairly easy to roll out and had to use a bit of flour/icing sugar to prevent sticking. Final product = soft and fairly spicy. Yay! Next time I will use a little less flour to reduce some of the dryness (although the final product was quite perfect in terms of texture). I think I'll also add a bit more cinnamon and give some ground black pepper a shot to really spice it up.

My version:
1/2 cup unsalted butter (approx 115g)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup treacle
1 egg yolk (save white for icing)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted (2 1/3 next time)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda (bicarb)
1 tsp ground cinnamon (1 1/2 or 2 next time)
1/2 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp ginger
1 tsp ground nutmeg

Royal Icing
1 egg white
1 cup of icing sugar
Dash of vanilla essence and food dye as desired

1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Stir in treacle and egg yolk. Combine the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg. Blend the flour mixture into the treacle mixture until smooth (using hands as necessary but don't over-work the mixture). Wrap in gladwrap and chill for at least one hour.

2. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius. On a lightly floured/iced surface, roll the dough out to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters. Place cookies approx 2 cm apart on trays lined with baking paper.

3. Bake for 7-10 minutes in the oven until firm. Remove from cookie sheets after a few minutes to cool on wire racks. Ice when cool.

Icing
1. Beat egg white with electric mixer on medium-high speed until soft peaks form.
2. Slowly add icing sugar and beat well after each addition. Once all the icing sugar has been added, continue beating at a high speed until firm peaks form. Beat in vanilla essence and food dye if desired.

Next up: father's day cake