THE FESTIVAL CARNET
Gingerbread men with simple icing
Small flat men with honey, ginger and cinnamon, decorated with a few white dots. A homemade version that is easy to customize, without reproducing a licensed character.
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Small flat men with honey, ginger and cinnamon, decorated with a few white dots. A homemade version that is easy to customize, without reproducing a licensed character.
Prepare the ingredients before starting and leave enough room to cool the batches. The times indicated are benchmarks: the edge, underside and texture of the cookie count more than an exact minute. The recipe is proposed for the family kitchen.
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The preparation step by step
Gentle the sweet ingredients
Put the butter, honey and brown sugar in a small saucepan. Heat over low heat, stirring until butter is melted. Remove from heat and let cool for 15 minutes, without boiling.
Prepare the dry ingredients
Mix the 300 g of flour, ginger, cinnamon, bicarbonate and salt in a bowl. Spread the spices well to avoid overly strong areas.
Beat the egg
Break the egg into a small bowl and check for any shell. Beat it and then weigh 50 g. The honey mixture should be warm to the touch before this addition, so as not to cook the egg.
Shapes the dough
Pour the honey-butter mixture and 50 g of egg into the flour. Mix with the spatula and then squeeze the dough by hand. It is soft and a bit sticky; do not add flour immediately.
Let it rest
Flatten the dough to 2 cm, cover and refrigerate for 1 hour. Honey makes the dough sticky to hot; rest will cut the shapes without stretching them.
Spread the dough
Preheat the oven to 170 °C, conventional oven setting (no fan). Spread the dough between two sheets of baking paper to 4 mm. If it still sticks strongly to the paper, put it back in the refrigerator for 10 minutes.
Cut out the men
Use a single 8 cm cookie cutter. Take off the silhouettes with a flat spatula supporting the legs and arms. Place them on two cold plates, spaced 2 cm apart, then reuse the offcuts.
Bake without drying
Cook each plate for 10 to 12 minutes. The edge should brown slightly and the center remain flexible. Smaller arms color quickly: watch them rather than waiting for a uniform brown.
Let cool
Leave the guys on the plate for 5 minutes, then move them on a wire rack. Wait at least 25 minutes. Decorating them lukewarm would melt the icing and make the cookies fragile.
Prepare the white lines
Mix 100 g of icing sugar with 15 g of lemon. Transfers to a dough scraper with an opening of 1 mm. Try it on paper: the line should stand without spreading immediately.
Simply decorate
Sets two points for the eyes, a short curve for the mouth and two points on the belly. Keep your arms and legs naked. There should be no sculpture, no fondant, no anatomical decoration.
Let dry
Let it dry flat for at least 2 hours. Check a point on a test piece before stacking. Store the cookies between sheets of baking paper.
Conservation. Store completely cold cookies in an airtight box, in a cool and dry room. Consume them within 5 days. Separate the filled biscuits from those that need to stay crunchy.
Recipe proposal with quantities and step by step. Times vary depending on the material: follow also the markers of texture and cooking.
The benchmarks for success
One plate, one thickness
Group pieces of comparable size on the same plate. Keep the second baking tray cold: a paste placed on hot metal would melt before cooking.
The dough becomes sticky
Put it back in the fridge for 10 minutes instead of adding large amounts of flour. Repeat the display between two sheets of baking paper.
Questions Before You Start
Can I make the dough the day before?
Yes for this cookie dough: keep it covered in the refrigerator for a maximum of 24 hours, then soften it a few minutes before spreading it.
Why are my cookies hard?
A long kneaded dough or prolonged cooking makes the cookie firmer. Stop the mixture as soon as the dough gathers and monitors the edge during cooking.
How to predict the preparation time?
The cooking time corresponds to the cumulation of the planned batches. Rest includes cold and cooling; a still sticky decor requires extra drying before storage.
Is this Shrek's man?
Nope. The file offers a silhouette of biscuit man freely decorated at home; it is neither an official recipe of the film nor a licensed product.
Baking tips for this recipe
- Preheat the oven according to the plug and prepare the mold before mixing the last ingredients.
- Uses the dimensions and cooking mode indicated: a higher or wider mold changes the cooking of the center.
- Follow the visual cues of step by step in addition to the duration. Respect the intended cooling before unmoulding or decorating.
Substitutions and variations
You can choose a sweeter or more full-bodied honey, keeping the indicated amount. Replacing honey with dry sugar, on the other hand, requires a review of the recipe.
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