Thursday, December 21, 2006

Gingerbread







This recipe makes a crisp gingerbread cookie. I've left the desiliters and grams untranslated, because I'm lazy. My gingerbread castle (the icing looks very professional, heh) required three times this recipe. It works in multiples.

Ingredients:

3/4 dl dark molasses
1 dl sugar
125 grams butter
1 ts ground cinnamon
1 ts ground ginger
1 ts ground cloves
1/2 tbs ground pomegranate peel (you won't find this, probably, so substitute the same amount of grated orange peel if you find organic oranges, or just omit)
1 egg
1/2 ts salt
1/2 ts soda
c. 3 1/2 dl all-purpose flour

What to do with them:

1. Mix molasses, sugar, butter and the spices in a saucepan. Let the mixture come to a boil. Then cool it.
2. Add the egg to the mixture. Separately mix together the flour, the salt and the soda. Sift them into the molasses-mixture.
3. Let the batter stay cold until the following day (put it in the fridge).
4. Roll the batter out on a floured board. How thin depends on what you use it for. If it's for a gingerbread house, 1/4 inch is adequate. If just for eating, as thin as you can make it. Cut out shapes as needed. If you're making cookies use those molds you can buy. If you're making a gingerbread house, make a paper pattern for the walls and the roof halves (and the four sides of a chimney if you want to have one) and use that as a guide. Remember to cut the holes for the windows and the door. You can save the piece for the door and when the house has been erected glue it back on as half-open.
5. While you are doing all this, heat the oven to 200 centigrades (400 Fahrenheit). Bake the cookies for 10-15 minutes. Makes about sixty. You can decorate the cookies with icing sugar, mixed first with a little lemon juice (and water, if needed). But you probably don't want to just daub this on like I did.

If you're making a gingerbread house, glue the walls together with melted sugar (melt it in a frying pan) (CAREFUL! VERY HOT!), first in pairs of two adjoining walls and then the pairs together. Glue the roof halves together in the same manner and gently place the roof on top of the walls. You can decorate the window edges and the door and the shingles on the roof with icing sugar, too. A tealight lit inside the house looks very nice, by the way. Just remember to watch it.

Now that I think of it a little, this whole project sounds pretty goofy. And you may need to lower the oven temperature a little for the walls and the roof as they are big so need to bake longer at a lower temperature.