Spooky gingerbread recipe

It’s October which means it’s officially spooky season! My housemates and I love nothing more than good festive food, and to us nothing screams Halloween more than spooky gingerbread! Today I’ll be sharing my recipe with you and showing you the designs we chose to make. This recipe makes about 25 medium sized gingerbread biscuits.

Ingredients

• 375 g plain flour + extra for rolling and dusting
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 3 tsps ground ginger
• 3 tsps ground cinnamon
• 120 g unsalted butter (cold & cubed)
• 175 g light brown sugar
• 5 tbsps golden syrup
• 1 large free range egg

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 190C/180C Fan/Gas Mark 5 and line 3-4 baking trays with greaseproof paper (or if like me you only have 2 trays, bake in 2 batches!)
2. Add the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger, and cinnamon to a large bowl and then add the cold cubed butter
3. Rub together with your fingers until it resembles breadcrumbs or mix the five ingredients in a food processor or stand mixer until it becomes breadcrumbs. If you use a stand mixer, ensure you stop mixing and scrape the sides of the bowl down regularly.
4. Add the sugar into the mix and combine, and then add the golden syrup and egg. Beat with a spatula or stand mixer until it is a smooth dough. This will take around 5 minutes by hand but keep going and it will eventually come together! (If using a stand mixer for this step, use the beater attachment until it begins to come together as a dough then finish by hand)
5. Knead the biscuit dough, and then roll it out onto a generously floured work surface.
6. Roll it out to about 1/2cm thickness and cut out your desired shapes! See below to take some inspiration from what we baked
7. Place them on the lined baking trays and bake in the oven for 10-11 minutes, cool on a wire rack fully, and then decorate how you please!

Tips:

• This recipe is quite large so you can cut the dough in half before rolling and store in an airtight container in the fridge until the next day
• Once baked, the biscuits will keep for up to a week in an airtight container (If they haven’t been eaten by then!)
• If you don’t have a rolling pin a roll of clingfilm can be used instead (I used this, and it worked great)
• If you like your cookies extra spicy, add 1 or 2 extra teaspoons of ginger and cinnamon for that extra kick

I hope you enjoy making these spooky sweet treats and that you have a great time whilst doing it too! Let us know what designs you make by tagging us on social media @uolstudentlife. Check out this video by Student Life creator Emily for some easy student friendly recipes and more student life recipes can be found here!

My recipe was adapted from this recipe. Thank you to Emily Robinson (2nd Year Media Production) for helping design the biscuits and for taking the photos used in this post.