When I think about the New Year, I immediately hear the music from the ballet "The Nutcracker" and the magical dance of the Dragee Fairy. And with them come the aromas of pine needles and spices, the taste of New Year's gingerbread on the tongue, so fragrant and elegant! What are you doing in December? And I go to visit and give everyone gingerbread! New Year's and funny, I bake them myself, and then decorate them! No, there is no New Year without treats! And if so, today we will bake Gift Gingerbread. You want to decorate a Christmas tree with them, you want to give them to friends.
So, we don't need anything special. Everything is very simple: flour, honey, sugar, butter, spices, eggs.
First, let's prepare the spices.
Grind the spices in a coffee grinder.
Be sure to sift to remove large particles.
Grind the sugar in a coffee grinder, at the same time it will be saturated with the aromas of spices. You can use powdered sugar right away.
Sift flour with powdered sugar.
Melt honey with butter in the microwave.
Break the eggs into a bowl, add salt and spices, mix.
Add honey with butter and add flour in parts. Knead soft dough.
Roll out the dough and cut out gingerbread cookies. Bake at 190 degrees until browned. Gingerbread bakes fast! 7-10 minutes. I do not grease the sheet with anything, I sprinkle it with flour.
Remove the finished gingerbread from the sheet after cooling.
While the cakes are cooling, prepare the frosting for decoration. I don't use any frosting mixer! I grind everything with a fork. For the glaze, you will need the protein of one egg, powdered sugar, a few drops of lemon juice and dye.
The glaze should be of a paintable consistency, not runny, but not runny either. Divide the glaze into 2 parts. Leave 13 white for drawing. Paint the rest in the colors you need for decoration.
Using a pastry envelope, trace the outline of each gingerbread.
I paint a little glaze in green for decorating Christmas trees.
I fill the outline with green icing.
And I decorate, for example, like this!
And if you try a little more, then you can do it!
Or something like that.
And how delicious!
Waiting for the New Year is not only decorating the house and creating a festive menu. As a rule, in every family, on the eve of December 31, they are engaged in baking. Not only grandiose cakes and delicate rolls, shortbread cookies and crispy "brushwood" are created. A real "hit" on the table during the holiday are delicious homemade gingerbread with icing. It's incredibly beautiful and delicious! Such pastries bring their own mood, warmth, comfort, a true feeling of happiness to the atmosphere of the house. In addition, the process of painting gingerbread in the kitchen can bring the whole family together. After all, everyone will surely want to make their own copy!
Honey Christmas gingerbread with icing
Delicious honey gingerbread for the New Year is a great opportunity to diversify the standard menu and add variety to the orderly range of appetizers and salads. It will turn out very tasty and spectacular thanks to the painting of finished fragrant confectionery products with sugar icing. At home, this is not so difficult to do.
Cooking time -1.5 hours.
The number of servings is 12.
Ingredients
To bake this version of New Year's gingerbread, you need:
- honey - 100 g;
- egg - 4 pcs.;
- peeled rye flour - 250 g;
- cocoa - 3 tsp;
- wheat flour - 400 g;
- butter - 90 g;
- egg white - 1 pc.;
- soda - 1 tsp;
- powdered sugar - 400 g;
- spices - 2 tsp
Note! In the composition of New Year's honey gingerbread, you can add cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, etc. from spices. But you should not use everything at once. Take 2-4 spices for the test.
Cooking method
The process of preparing New Year's gingerbread does not cause any particular difficulties. If you use the proposed step-by-step recipe with a photo, then all problems and difficulties can be completely avoided.
- First you need to prepare all the components for our gingerbread and glaze.
- If all the ingredients are collected, you can go directly to the process of creating confectionery for the holiday. To do this, combine butter and honey in a common bowl. The container with the components is placed on a slow-slow fire. Everything needs to be planned out. You can also use a water bath for this.
- In a separate bowl, mix powdered sugar and eggs.5
- When the melted butter-honey mixture is thoroughly dispersed, soda should be poured into it. Vinegar does not need to extinguish it, honey will do it. As a result, foam forms on the surface of the mixture.
- Carefully pour the egg mixture into this mass, continuously breaking it with a mixer.
- Separately, sift both types of flour. Then it needs to be done again, but already mixing together spices, cocoa and both types of flour - rye and wheat. Pour the dry mass in a thin stream to the composition of honey and eggs. The mass is stirred. You have to make dough out of it. First you need to mix it with a mixer.
- Then the dough will have to be kneaded by hand. It is divided into 4 equal servings. The blanks are wrapped in cling film and sent to the refrigerator for an hour.
- Chilled honey dough for gingerbread is rolled out into a layer with a thickness of not more than 5 mm. Try to achieve a uniform dough, without bubbles. Gingerbread cookies are cut out of the resulting layer using stencils or molds.
On a note! If you plan to decorate the Christmas tree with finished confectionery, then at this stage make holes for the fasteners. For this purpose, it is optimal to use cocktail tubes.
- The baking sheet is lined with parchment. Our gingerbread cookies are laid out on it. They should be sent to the oven, which is brought to 150 degrees.
- It will take 10 minutes to bake the sweetness, a maximum of 12. The main thing is to wait for the formation of a golden crust.
- Now you need to make the icing to decorate the gingerbread. To do this, powdered sugar (only 200 g) is whipped with raw chicken protein. The resulting viscous dense mass is sent to a pastry bag or syringe. You can take an ordinary file or a package. At the bag, the tip is carefully cut off, just a little, so that the contours are created even and neat.
- It remains only to paint New Year's gingerbread, guided by your imagination.
As you can see, making Christmas gingerbread with your own hands is not so difficult!
Gingerbread Christmas Gingerbread
Gingerbread New Year's gingerbread with icing has become a real classic. Their rich taste is associated with cozy winter evenings spent in the kitchen with the whole family. It is not surprising that such pastries, decorated with icing, will take their rightful place at the festive table. After all, as you know, the New Year is a family holiday.
Cooking time -1 hour.
The number of servings is 5.
Ingredients
To prepare this version of New Year's gingerbread, you need:
- butter - 200 g;
- ginger - 2 tsp;
- granulated sugar - ½ kg;
- cinnamon - 1 pinch;
- water - 200 ml;
- flour - 900 g;
- nutmeg - 1 pinch;
- salt - 1/3 tsp;
- red ground pepper - 1 pinch;
- soda - 1 tsp
For the glaze, which we will paint the finished gingerbread, you need:
- lime or lemon - ½ pc.;
- powdered sugar - 400 g;
- protein - 2 pcs.;
- gel-type dyes - 4 drops.
Cooking method
So, if you decide to diversify the festive table with New Year's gingerbread, take note of the proposed recipe with step-by-step photos. So it will be easier for you to cope with baking, especially if you are making such a dessert for the first time.
- First, prepare all the necessary ingredients and do not forget about the molds for cutting figures from gingerbread dough. You can make not only funny little men. Stars, Christmas trees, mittens, images of Santa Claus will perfectly fit into the atmosphere of the holiday. You can even just cut out charming circles with a glass.
- Take a pan with a thick bottom or a cauldron. All sugar is poured into the container. The dishes are put on fire.
- The first 5 minutes, sugar should dissolve without your participation, on its own. It must not be disturbed, touched, tasted or removed from the stove.
- When the bottom layer of granulated sugar disperses and changes color somewhat, it is worth starting to stir the mass.
- You don't need to add fire. Don't make it overly strong. Let the sugar gradually and gradually dissolve. As a result, it should disperse entirely. The liquid mass will acquire a dark saturated color. When the syrup is ready, you will need to boil a kettle of water. You need to take only 200 ml of steep var. They should be carefully poured into the burnt sugar.
Note! When water is poured into sugar syrup, the mass will begin to “shoot”. So be very careful not to get burned.
- The resulting composition must be carefully mixed so that its consistency becomes homogeneous. In the mixture you will need to put the butter, previously cut into small squares. The mass must be mixed and wait until it becomes completely homogeneous due to the dissolution of the oil.
- Pour cinnamon and salt into the blank for gingerbread for the New Year. The composition must be diluted with nutmeg and soda. It also comes with crushed red pepper.
- The preparation must be carefully stirred. It should double in size. The mass will turn into a lush and dense foam.
- The flour should be sifted twice so that the finished gingerbread cookies are tender and tasty. The mass is removed from the stove, and prepared flour will need to be poured into it in several passes.
- After adding each part of the flour to the dough, the composition must be thoroughly stirred. After adding the entire serving of flour, the dough should become obedient and elastic. A certain stickiness will be present, but not excessive. The mass is wrapped in cling film and sent to the refrigerator for an hour. It is best to leave the dough in the cold and do it all night.
- In the meantime, you need to start preparing sugar icing (icing) for painting future gingerbread cookies. To do this, prepare the necessary components.
- Raw proteins from chicken eggs must be poured into a free bowl. Fine powdered sugar is poured to them in a thin stream, which is sifted through the finest sieve before being added to the composition.
- The components should be stirred with a fork or whisk. All powder should be saturated with protein mass, as a result of which the composition will turn white a little. Then you should continue beating with a mixer or blender. The device should be set to powerful speed so that the mixture becomes thick and lush. Its shade at the exit should acquire a crystal whiteness. While whipping, squeeze the juice from half a lemon or lime into a mass.
On a note! The total duration of whipping icing is about 5 minutes.
- So our icing is ready to decorate New Year's gingerbread cookies for serving on the festive table. Aising will need to be divided into several portions and diluted with each specific dye. The icing is covered with a film and sent to the refrigerator.
- They must be sent to the oven, heated to 180 degrees. The optimal mode for baking is 7 minutes.
- When the baking is completely cool, it should be painted with prepared icing.
The result is excellent tasty New Year's gingerbread.
Video recipes
To make your New Year's gingerbreads a success, first get acquainted with the video recipes:
Prepare bright and incredibly delicious gingerbread cookies with the whole family for the kindest holidays!
Almost everyone associates gingerbread with icing (recipe with photo) with the holiday. A lot of people bake them for the New Year and decorate them with multi-colored or just white icing to match. Everyone is happy with the result - children and adults. If you make small holes in the blanks before baking, then it is very convenient to hang such gingerbread cookies on the Christmas tree. Children are very fond of treating themselves to them, removing them from the branches of the Christmas tree.
- soft butter - 100 grams;
- chicken egg - 1 piece;
- wheat flour - 200 grams;
- honey - 3 teaspoons;
- sugar - 110 grams;
- baking soda - 1.5 teaspoons;
- ground ginger - 2 teaspoons;
- ground cardamom - 1 teaspoon;
- cinnamon - 1 teaspoon.
For icing sugar:
- powdered sugar - 150 grams;
- lemon juice - 2 teaspoons;
- cold boiled water - 1 tablespoon;
- dyes of your choice.
Take honey and heat it in a water bath. It does not need to be boiled, it should just become liquid. To do this, you can simply take a deep plate of honey and put it in very hot water. You can also hold the plate over a weakly boiling kettle (pre-open its lid and put a sieve on it, in which you place a plate of honey).
Place softened butter and sugar in a separate bowl. Pound them or beat them with a mixer at low speed.
Add liquid honey (but not hot) and one egg to the egg-sugar mixture.
Then use a mixer and beat all the ingredients until smooth.
Now take another bowl and sift flour into it, also put the necessary spices in the indicated amount and soda. Mix everything well.
Add the loose mixture to the buttery mass in small portions, mixing the dough well. Make sure that the final dough is homogeneous and without lumps. It should feel a little sticky to the touch. As soon as the dough is ready, put it in a bag or wrap it in cling film, then put it in the refrigerator for two hours. So it will freeze a little, and it will be easier to roll it out.
After a while, knead the dough a little and roll it out to a thickness of 0.5 cm. It cannot be kept at room temperature for a long time, so do not crumple it for a long time. Then squeeze out the figures with the help of molds. If there are no molds, then you can use a regular round cup or glass. Then prepare a baking sheet - cover it with parchment or grease with butter. Put the blanks on it. Do this carefully, you can use a knife to pry the figures from the dough.
The laid out blanks should not be placed close to each other, as they will rise slightly during the baking process. The oven should be heated to 180 degrees and bake the gingerbread cookies for about seven minutes. Don't overdo it so it doesn't dry out.
Baked goods fresh out of the oven will be soft. Remove it from the pan, after a few minutes it will become more solid.
After the gingerbread cookies are ready, make icing for them. Start by mixing the icing sugar and lemon juice together.
Then slowly pour in a tablespoon of water and mix everything well. Do not rush, if necessary, add more powder or water.
As a result, you should get a thick and viscous mass. The readiness of the glaze can be checked as follows. If you drip a little onto a clean surface and the drop sticks without running, then the frosting is perfect. At this stage, dyes can be added to it if desired. If you will use several of them, then spread the icing into cups and add your own color to each.
Now you can start decorating the gingerbread. Icing should be placed in a pastry bag or rolled parchment paper, or in a regular tight bag with a cut hole. Well, then start decorating. Give free rein to your imagination. In round cookies, you can draw any pattern in the form of snowflakes or Christmas balls.
Elegant gingerbread cookies are ready. By the way, they can be a wonderful tasty gift for any occasion for your friends and family. A box of gingerbread cookies will always be appropriate for any occasion. Bon appetit! 
Recipe 2: homemade gingerbread
- Butter - 200 gr.
- Sugar - ¾ tbsp.
- Honey - 3 tbsp. with a slide
- Baking powder - 1 tsp
- Turmeric - 1 tbsp.
- Nutmeg - 1 tbsp.
- Ginger - 2 tbsp
- Cinnamon - 1 tbsp
- Flour - 4 tbsp.
- Salt - to taste
- Chicken eggs - 3 pcs.
For glaze:
- 1 protein
- 200-250 grams of powdered sugar
Usually the standard set of spices in gingerbread is ginger itself, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves! But, from personal experience, the taste of cloves is quite sharp and specific, not everyone likes it. I replaced the cloves with turmeric and got bright, fragrant orange gingerbread cookies - well, very light and tasty! All kids love it!!! So, we figured out the spices.
We first take out the butter from the refrigerator. Let it lie down in a warm kitchen and become soft. We put it in a container convenient for work. Add sugar.
Beat butter with sugar with a mixer until fluffy. The butter will lighten up quite a bit during the whipping process. Now add honey. My spoons were so full that the proportion of honey probably doubled - the gingerbread turned out to be quite sweet.
Whip the buttermilk with honey. The result was an air mass that looked like a sweet cloud. Now add baking powder. The main component of spices is ginger, we put it in two parts in proportion to the rest of the spices (the quantity is indicated in the recipe). Now add the rest of the spices - turmeric, cinnamon and nutmeg.
We beat. It turned out such a yellow, bright mass. Add chicken eggs and beat thoroughly with a mixer at high speeds.
The basis of the test is ready. It remains to add flour. We put it in parts.
Mix the first part (about 2.5 cups) with a mixer.
The rest is mixed by hand. This is such a thick dough. Cover it with cling film and put it in the fridge to rest for 2-2.5 hours.
The dough has become dense and now it is very convenient and easy to work with it.
Begin. Sprinkle the work surface with flour, take a piece of dough, roll it out in a thin layer and cut out various figures.
I have such a fun set of stars, a crown, a bell and a mustache.
We spread the figures on a baking sheet and bake in the oven at a temperature of 200 degrees for literally 7-10 minutes.
As soon as the gingerbread cookies are reddened, you can put the following.
You can decorate the gingerbread cookies with sugar icing. To do this, take one egg white and 200 grams of powdered sugar - beat until the mass is light and the state when the drop freezes on the whisk. It's literally 5-6 minutes at high speed mixer.
Ready! Now we are packing New Year's gingerbread in gift sets and making our dear people happy!
Recipe 3, step by step: gingerbread in sugar glaze
Nothing could be better for a holiday or just a nice family tea party! The sight alone is so uplifting! And for Christmas and New Year - you can’t do it at all! Not to mention children's holidays) So I'd better start telling you how to cook the most fragrant gingerbread.
- Sugar - 100 grams
- Honey - 165 grams
- Ground ginger - 1.5 tsp
- Ground cinnamon - 1 tsp
- Ground cloves - 1 tsp
- Soda - 2 tsp without a slide
- Butter - 125 grams
- Egg - 1 pc.
- Flour - 500 grams
We take a small saucepan, pour sugar, put honey and three types of spices - cinnamon, ginger and cloves. We put on the burner and heat until the mass becomes liquid, of course, stir constantly.
Without removing from the stove, add baking soda and mix quickly.
The mass will immediately turn white and rise a little, become more magnificent.
Remove the pan from the stove and immediately add the creamy mixture to the honey-spicy mass and stir until it dissolves.
As soon as the mass has cooled slightly, break the egg and mix quickly with a whisk.
It remains only to add flour. Its amount can be slightly varied, according to the recipe there is quite a lot of it, I just added it in parts, when it seemed that the dough was already quite dense in consistency, I did not pour out the leftovers (about half a glass remained).
Knead the dough with your hands. It should turn out crumbly, like shortcrust pastry.
Roll out the dough into a very thin sheet, about 2 millimeters, the thinner the better.
And cut out the figures. I had this big one.
We shift it onto a baking sheet (you can not grease it with anything, because there is a lot of oil in the dough and the cookies will not stick). We send it to a preheated oven. I can’t say for sure about the temperature, I had about 190-200 degrees. But they are baked very quickly, as the dough is thin, so do not go far, you need to follow without leaving.
That's all, delicious, fragrant, spicy gingerbread cookies are ready! Can be served hot, hot.
You can also decorate gingerbread cookies by whipping protein with sugar.
Recipe 4: how to make gingerbread with cocoa and honey
- Wheat flour - 650 g
- Honey - 85 g
- Butter - 90 g
- Powdered sugar (+200 g. for glaze) - 210 g
- Chicken egg - 4 pcs
- Soda - 1.5 tsp
- Spices - 3 tsp
- Cocoa powder - 3 tsp
- Egg white (In glaze) - 1 pc.
Melt honey and butter in a water bath.
Beat eggs with powdered sugar.
Melted honey with butter COOL! If added hot, the dough will be rubbery and difficult to roll out.
Add to beaten eggs and mix.
Add soda, spices and cocoa. Mix. Here's what happens.
Sift flour.
Mix. I do it first with a mixer:
Here's what happened:
And then by hand. We mix well. If you knead poorly, then there will be bubbles.
Everything sticks at first. But don't be afraid. All this mass is divided into 4 parts. We take one part, form a lump and put it in a plastic bag.
Place the dough in the freezer for 15-20 minutes.
The dough has cooled down. We get a piece. I'm a little bit. Roll out. Roll out so that there is no air in the dough. Now that was a revelation for me. If you roll it out thinly, in mm, then the cookies will turn out thin, crispy, but ... crooked. Therefore, the thicker the cookie, the smoother it is at the exit. I tried to make a thickness of 3-4 mm. This, in my opinion, is optimal.
We cut everything. Transfer carefully to a baking sheet. I baked on a silicone mat. By the way. If the rug is thin, then it can rear up in the oven, and then the gingerbread cookies will also be uneven.
I baked at 150 degrees. When I increased the temperature, the gingerbread began to bubble. That is, again - they became uneven.
Gingerbread browned, so you can take it out.
Paint with glaze.
Recipe 6: how to make gingerbread at home
- Premium wheat flour 500 gr.
- Butter (or margarine for baking) 100 gr.
- Chicken egg 1 pc.
- Sugar 125-150 gr.
- Honey (any variety without bitterness) 250 gr.
- Coriander (dried) 3 teaspoons
- Carnation 50 pcs.
- Cinnamon (ground) 1 teaspoon
- Ginger (fresh) 3 cm.
- Cocoa powder - 10 gr.
- Baking powder for dough 2 teaspoons
- Lemon juice 40 ml.
- Powdered sugar 100 gr.
Put honey, butter and sugar in a shallow saucepan, set to warm over medium heat until sugar is completely dissolved. At the same time, do not forget to stir constantly.
Then take the pan off the heat. We take cloves and coriander, and grind with a coffee grinder, after which we sift through a sieve. Grind ginger in the same way. Add all this to the honey mass, pour more cinnamon and mix thoroughly. Next, add cocoa powder, mix until a homogeneous mass is formed and leave to cool.
Then we drive an egg into a saucepan, add flour and baking powder, knead a soft, elastic dough. We leave it for 3 hours in a warm place, covered with a towel.
We set the oven to heat up to a temperature of 180-200 degrees. We take baking paper and roll out the dough on it with a rolling pin, about 3 cm thick. Then, using special molds, cut out the figures. We remove the excess dough, and transfer the paper with the gingerbread cookies to a baking sheet and set to bake in a preheated oven for 15-18 minutes.
At this time, mix in a shallow bowl two tablespoons of lemon juice and powdered sugar. You can now take the pan out of the oven.
We transfer the finished glaze to a pastry bag and color the gingerbread cookies.
As soon as the glaze hardens, the gingerbread cookies can be served on the table. Brew aromatic tea with lemon and call the household to the table. Bon appetit!
Recipe 7: Gingerbread with Nutmeg (Step by Step)
Gingerbread is a classic Christmas pastry. They keep for a long time in a tightly closed dry jar. You can paint them at will, decorate them with multi-colored sprinkles or coconut flakes, chocolate, etc. Show your imagination, connect the children. They will definitely enjoy this activity and you will have a great time together. Have a nice holidays!
- Wheat flour of the highest grade 450 gr
- Butter 125 gr
- Sugar 125 gr
- Chicken egg 1 pc
- Honey 125 gr
- Ginger 1 tsp
- Cinnamon 1 tsp
- Nutmeg ½ tsp
- Cloves 1/3 tsp
- Baking powder 1.5 tsp
- Soda ½ tsp
- Salt 1 pinch
Mix flour with spices, sugar, baking powder, soda and a pinch of salt.
Add chilled diced butter.
Grind into crumbs.
Add egg, honey and 1 tbsp. cold water.
Knead elastic dough.
Roll out the dough into a layer 4-5 mm thick.
Put on a baking sheet covered with parchment and bake for 12 minutes at 170C. Top with icing or white chocolate as desired.
Recipe 8: beautiful gingerbread cookies for the holiday (with photo)
Fragrant, tasty, fun. The design process will bring great pleasure to both children and adults.
- flour (with a slide) - 1 stack;
- butter - 100 g;
- sugar - 0.5 stack;
- egg - 1 pc;
- baking powder - 1.5 tsp;
- cocoa powder - 1 tsp;
- ground ginger - 1 tsp;
- ground cinnamon - 0.5 tsp;
- salt (a pinch);
- egg white (for glaze) - 1 pc;
- powdered sugar (for icing) - 0.5 cups;
- lemon juice (for icing) - 1 tbsp;
Sift flour, baking powder, cocoa, ginger, cinnamon through a sieve. Add butter crushed with a knife into the crumbs. Pour sugar, enter the egg, quickly knead the dough.
Roll into a ball, wrap in cling film, refrigerate for 1.5-2 hours.
Roll out the chilled dough on a floured table into a layer 7-8 mm thick.
Apply paper stencils (or use curly molds) and cut out the gingerbread cookies. Lay the biscuits on a floured baking sheet. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 180°C.
Beat the cooled protein with a mixer into a stable foam. Continuing to beat, add in small portions of powdered sugar, lemon juice. Beat for another 15-20 seconds. If desired, food coloring can be added to the glaze.
Decorate the gingerbread with icing and let the icing dry. I used in addition to glaze gel markers
Bonus: Frosting for Delicious Homemade Gingerbread Cookies
- 1 pc egg
- 150 gr powdered sugar
- 10 gr lemon juice
- vanillin
- food colorings
Separate the egg white into a clean bowl. This must be done carefully, because if at least a drop of yolk gets in, the icing will not work. Chilled protein is best whipped.
First, just break the protein with a mixer.
When it becomes a homogeneous consistency, add lemon juice, vanilla and a little powdered sugar.
Whisk after each addition until all grains are dissolved.
When the mass becomes similar in consistency to kefir, the glaze is ready. If you add a little more sugar, the icing will become thicker and can be used to draw patterns. We divide it into portions, into which we add food coloring, and place it in a pastry bag.
Gingerbread is a traditional New Year's treat in European countries. A gingerbread man is an indispensable attribute of a winter holiday along with a Christmas tree, garlands and Coca-Cola advertising. Despite the abundance of hot spices, and especially ginger, it turns out a sweet and fragrant treat. What would Christmas baking be without these spicy flavors? The smell of homemade gingerbread cannot be expressed in words. Various molds allow you to cut out gingerbread cookies in the form of Christmas trees, snowflakes, various animals, houses, hearts and so on. Great New Year's Eve entertainment for the kids. Christmas cookies can be given by tying them with a beautiful ribbon, or hanging on a Christmas tree as an edible decoration. And from this dough you can make a beautiful and edible decoration for the Christmas tree - a gingerbread house.
Christmas gingerbread would not be so festive if it were not for their painted decoration. Aising, or royal icing (Royal icing), is prepared quite simply, but there are many nuances, so I recommend looking at a separate icing recipe. The color of the dough depends on the amount of spices: more cinnamon - darker, less - lighter. Experience tells us that the longer the dough rests, the tastier, darker and smoother the gingerbread is. Therefore, let the dough rest for at least an hour. And it is better if the dough lies in the freezer for a week. I offer you a detailed recipe with a photo of gingerbread with icing. All proportions in the recipe are perfectly matched, the thickness of the gingerbread is adjustable independently. Thin gingerbread cookies will be crispy, while thicker ones will be soft inside. By the way, it is not at all necessary to cook such gingerbread only for the New Year, although they are the decoration of this holiday. Such pastries can be prepared for Valentine's Day, and for March 8, and for your birthday, if you choose the appropriate molds and prepare a beautiful multi-colored icing. But the most important thing is to cook with love.
I propose to cook exactly Christmas gingerbread in the form of snowflakes and Christmas trees. The aroma that fills the house during the baking process is a special, magical aroma, it creates a New Year's mood and encourages you to sing “Jingle bells” right in the kitchen. Cooking Christmas baking is a great tradition that will help bring the family together and keep the kids busy.
Ingredients:
- 250 g (2.5 tablespoons) premium flour;
- 0.5 tsp soda;
- 1 egg;
- 100 g butter;
- 70 g of sugar;
- 1 tbsp with a slide of honey (about 30 g);
- 1 tsp ground ginger;
- 2 tsp cinnamon;
- 1 tsp anise;
- a pinch of nutmeg;
- a pinch of cardamom;
- a pinch of cloves.
How to cook gingerbread at home recipe.
1. We combine the egg, sugar, soft butter and honey. Sugar is suitable for both regular white and brown. We take honey to taste, or whatever it is. In the West, honey is often replaced with pataca.
2. Beat everything with a mixer until smooth.
3. In a separate bowl, combine all the spices, flour and, of course, soda - this ingredient will make the gingerbread lush. It is not necessary to extinguish soda, it will react with honey.
4. Mix the contents of two bowls.
5. Knead the dough with a spoon until it darkens and separates. By the way, the final color of the dough depends on both spices and the type of honey. From light varieties (linden, acacia) you get gingerbread cookies of a pleasant brownish tint, and if you take buckwheat honey, you will get dark, almost chocolate gingerbread cookies.
6. Gradually roll the dough into a smooth ball from heterogeneous lumps.
7. Flatten it (it will cool faster this way) and wrap it in cling film. We send it to the refrigerator for at least an hour. Gingerbread cookies are easier to cut out of cold dough, they turn out to be more even and neat.
8. Divide the dough into 2 parts. We will roll out one, and the second can be put in the refrigerator for now.
9. Roll out into a layer on parchment or between two sheets (so the rolling pin does not stick, and you do not need to sprinkle anything with excess flour, which will clog the dough). If the rolling pin is lacquered, smooth (like mine), then you can only get by with parchment from the bottom. The shape of the gingerbread depends on the thickness of the layer: if you roll it too thin, you get crispy biscuits, not gingerbread.
10. Now the most interesting thing: we begin to push through the layer with molds. If there are no special molds, you can use an ordinary glass or cut the dough with a knife. Our Christmas or New Year's gingerbread can be of the usual rounded shape, snowflakes and Christmas trees can be drawn on them with icing. We try to use the entire area of the dough as much as possible, but leave a small distance between the gingerbread cookies - when baking, the gingerbread cookies will disperse a little both in breadth and in height. Carefully remove the excess dough and roll it into a ball again, only on another sheet of parchment. The main thing is not to let the dough heat up, otherwise it may begin to delaminate and lose shape. If the dough has warmed up, put it in the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes, and cut it out again. It is very convenient to transfer the gingerbread cookies to a baking sheet along with a sheet of parchment - the molds do not deform, the gingerbread cookies turn out to be even and beautiful. In this form, we send our snowflakes to a preheated oven to bake until cooked. They need from 7 to 10 minutes at a temperature of 180 degrees. Readiness is determined by a toothpick, it should not leave traces of dough. Gingerbread cookies can start to burn quite quickly and our goal is to prevent this. And, although it is quite difficult to determine from the first time by the color of baking whether it is burnt or not, this affects the taste very noticeably. So let's get it and try it. By the way, gingerbread cookies are softer when hot, and crispy when cooled.
11. The recipe for New Year's gingerbread at home has come to an end. But you need to decorate them to create a festive atmosphere of Christmas and New Year.
12. Still, without icing, the gingerbread cookies do not look festive enough, so we put them in a separate container to cool down, and proceed to the preparation of royal icing.
13. Proteins of five quail eggs are added to 250 g of finely ground powdered sugar.
14. Knead the cream of a thick consistency, first with a spoon, then with a mixer at minimum speed. It will take about 7 minutes in total.
15. Dilute a few drops of icing with boiled water and knead. Glaze of suitable consistency should reach for a spoon.
16. Decorate the gingerbread cookies with a pastry bag: the lines stretch and then lie down. Dry the jewelry for about 30 minutes.
17. New Year's gingerbread is ready. Bon appetit and happy New Year holidays!
If you have never baked the most New Year's sweet, you have lost a lot. What a pleasure to cook and then decorate New Year's gingerbread with the children! Moreover, there is nothing complicated in preparing this delicacy.
To bake New Year's gingerbread, you will need a minimum of ingredients. Mandatory components of this New Year's dessert are flour, any honey that is at hand, and spices (spices). Without them, New Year's gingerbread and not gingerbread at all, because even the name of this delicacy already implies the presence of spices in it.
But to decorate New Year's gingerbread, you will also need patience and a good mood. So stock up on both, take your loved ones to help and prepare New Year's gingerbread cookies for the festive table for a dessert of fabulous beauty. We are ready, in turn, to offer you several recipes, from the simplest to the most intricate, leaving the choice up to you.
Sweet honey New Year's gingerbread "Winter's Tale"
Ingredients:
4 tbsp. flour,
½ st. water,
3 eggs,
1 st. l. butter,
1 st. honey,
1 st. l. ground cinnamon,
½ tsp ground cloves,
½ tsp soda,
1 st. almonds.
For glaze:
1 egg white
1 st. powdered sugar
8-10 drops of lemon juice.
Cooking:
Put the mixture of water and honey on the fire and bring to a boil. Cool slightly, gradually add flour, soda, mashed eggs, butter, cinnamon, cloves and chopped almonds. Mix and place the dough on a table sprinkled with flour. Roll out the dough into a layer 1-1.5 cm thick and cut out the figures. Put the gingerbread cookies on a baking sheet covered with baking paper and bake in an oven preheated to 200ºС for 10-15 minutes. Let the finished gingerbread cookies cool and cover them with icing. To prepare it, beat the protein with a whisk until it is increased 3-4 times. While beating, slowly add the icing sugar and then the lemon juice. Rub the icing until white and fluffy. Using a pastry bag or a simple plastic bag with the end cut off, simply spread the icing on the gingerbread cookies. You can sprinkle them with confectionery toppings in the form of stars, snowflakes, balls, and then wait until the icing hardens to admire the creation of your hands.
Unfortunately, such rich, lush gingerbread cookies are not suitable for drawing patterns on them. For this, the so-called kozuli are ideal - gingerbread made from a denser dough.
Gingerbread icing can be tinted to create intricate patterns. It is desirable to use natural products as dyes - cocoa, chocolate, beetroot, carrot or spinach juice, etc.
Chocolate Christmas gingerbread
Ingredients:
250 g honey
100 g sugar
150 g butter,
1 egg
500 g flour
1 tsp baking powder
25 g cocoa powder
2 cinnamon sticks
5 carnations,
pea-sized nutmeg
1 cardamom inflorescence,
some vanilla.
For glaze:
1 protein
180 g of powdered sugar,
a few drops of lemon juice
1 st. l. starch (without top).
Cooking:
Melt butter, honey and sugar in a saucepan, add 1 tbsp. l. spices ground in a coffee grinder. Leave the mass to warm up for another 5 minutes, but do not boil. Then mix the flour with cocoa, baking powder, add the egg, slowly pour in the hot mixture and mix. You should get a dough that resembles plasticine in consistency. Knead well, wrap in cling film and refrigerate for a couple of hours. Before cooking, remove the dough from the refrigerator and let it rest for another half an hour at room temperature so that it softens. On a table sprinkled with flour, roll out the dough into a layer 3-5 mm thick, cut out cockerel figures from it and put them on a baking sheet covered with baking paper, send them to an oven preheated to 170ºС for 15 minutes, if you want the gingerbread cookies to turn out soft, or for 25-30 minutes if you prefer harder and more tanned. After baking, decorate the gingerbread cookies with glaze patterns. To prepare the glaze, mix all the ingredients thoroughly in a bowl. Keep an eye on the glaze, its consistency should be such that it can be painted.
Orange New Year's gingerbread "Yolochnye toys"
Ingredients:
7 art. flour,
2 tsp baking powder
3 eggs,
240 g butter,
2 tbsp. Sahara,
1-2 tbsp. l. honey,
2 tsp cocoa powder
2 medium sized oranges
2 tsp cinnamon,
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp salt,
icing - for decoration.
Cooking:
Remove the zest from the oranges, squeeze the juice from the fruit. Combine butter, eggs, flour, sugar and orange juice (about 100 ml), add cocoa, ginger, cinnamon, liquid honey, baking powder and zest to the mixture. Knead the dough. Divide it into 4 parts, roll each one alternately into a layer 3-5 mm thick. Remember that the thinner you roll out the dough, the firmer and crispier your gingerbread will be. Cut out the shapes. You can use a cocktail tube to make holes, then the gingerbread can be hung on a Christmas tree. Place the cut out figures on a baking sheet lined with baking paper and bake in the oven preheated to 180ºС for 15 minutes. Then let the finished gingerbread cookies cool and decorate them with icing, which you can cook using the previous recipes or your own, which have already been repeatedly tested in practice.
New Year's gingerbread roes
Ingredients:
1 kg rye flour
1 st. honey,
2 tbsp. Sahara,
2 tbsp. water,
100 g butter.
1 g of cinnamon and cloves.
For glaze:
2 squirrels,
5 st. l. powdered sugar.
Cooking:
Mix sugar, honey and water and boil until the mixture turns brown. Cool it to 70ºС, add butter, cinnamon and cloves to it, stir in the flour and take out the finished dough in the cold, let it stand there for 1 hour. After that, the dough will become pliable, it will be possible not only to cut out of it, but also to fashion anything. It is worth noting that it is a little more difficult to work with rye dough than with wheat dough, but gingerbread made from rye dough is much tastier. Roll out the dough on a table sprinkled with flour into a layer, cut out the desired figures from it, which are then placed on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper and bake for 10 minutes at a temperature of 200-220ºС. The figurines should be browned. An interesting fact is that while the gingerbread cookies are warm, they are soft, when they cool, they become harder, and after a couple of days they become softer again. Decorate the baked roes with colored glaze. To prepare it, beat egg whites with powdered sugar. Pour the finished icing into cups (there should be as many as the colors you will use), leave for 20 minutes. During this time, the powdered sugar will completely dissolve, and the mixture will be more homogeneous.
If you want the glazed gingerbread cookies to dry faster, you can dry them in the oven at a temperature of no more than 50ºС. And do not forget to control this process, looking to see if the drawing has changed color.
Forget about fat creamy roses on store-bought cakes and conditionally edible icing on imported gingerbread cookies, make homemade New Year's gingerbread! Baked and decorated with their own hands, they are a thousand times tastier than store-bought desserts. And on our website you can always find even more New Year's recipes and tips on what to cook on the New Year's table.
Larisa Shuftaykina
