Gloverly Cupcakes

I’ve got so many things to blog about and not enough time! I made these a couple of weeks ago with Becky when she came to stay. I’m having a baking weekend (again) this weekend and I made these (…again!) so I guess it makes sense to blog about these next. I’m baking Christmas presents for people this year and one of the things I’ve decided to make are mini gingerbread men and snowflakes – hopefully I’ll find time this weekend/next week to blog about the other things I’m making.

The snowflakes (which Becky actually iced!) were based on the decoration in Peggy Porschen’s Boutique Baking – we thought they looked really pretty and were nicer than some of the pictures we’d seen of ones which were completely covered in icing. There were also some smaller ones (which I’ve done again this weekend) but I don’t think I got any decent photos of them. The gingerbread men were the same as the ones I made last year but I have no idea where I copied them from!

So, I hear you say, what recipe did I use? Well, I’ve tried several gingerbread recipes in the past but they tend to rise too much or lose their shape and I’m always disappointed by them. But a couple of years ago I discovered a recipe in my Cookie and Biscuit Bible for the traditional German lebkuchen which I adapted and found it worked perfectly. It has a much richer and treacley-flavour than traditional gingerbread. We overbaked/over-rolled it a couple of weeks ago and it came out really hard but this weekend it worked perfectly – such a relief given I’m planning on giving it to people as Christmas presents (I don’t want to be blamed for breaking teeth!).

Gingerbread Biscuits (adapted from The Cookie and Biscuit Bible)

115g light muscavado sugar

115g soft butter

2 eggs

115g treacle

400g plain flour

1 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp mixed spice

Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy. Then beat in the eggs and treacle until smooth. Stir in the flour and spices until it comes together, tip out onto a work surface and knead it briefly. Then wrap it in cling film and leave to chill in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 4. Line 4 trays with greaseproof paper.

Lightly flour a rolling pin and work surface and roll out the dough to about 5mm thick. Use cookie cutters or a knife to cut out the shapes you want. Place on the baking trays (they can be pretty close to each other since they don’t spread out much but leave a bit of a gap between the biscuits).

Keep re-rolling until you’ve used all the dough. Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes. Leave on the tray to cool for about 5 minutes and then place on cooling racks to cool completely before decorating with royal icing.

We filled piping bags with white, green and red royal icing, with small (size 1) nozzles attached in order to pipe the decorations for these.