Gingerbread biscuits

We make gingerbread biscuits a lot. The girls like big ones that they can take for packed lunches, but we also make lots of little ones for nibbling at home. I tried a few dairy-free recipes for gingerbread, but the best by far was actually an Annabel Karmel one I found online. The dough recipe just uses soya margarine instead of butter and that's it. We have so many cutters, but today the girls wanted bears and circles, and I chose the old-fashioned gingerbread men and little diamonds. I always make diamonds, when you cut them out you can cut them very close together, so you don't have to keep pressing the leftover dough back together and re-rolling. I guess a square cutter would be just as good for doing this.


These are great biscuits for a decorating session, either just my two girls or with their friends. I make up a small bowl of icing sugar and water icing and give them a variety of sprinkles and decorations. They spoon a little icing onto each biscuit and then arrange and sprinkle the decorations to their hearts' content. It keeps them amused for ages, and they can eat their creations too. I found the tidiest way of doing this is to give them a few biscuits on a low sided baking tray. This way, the sprinkles don't roll all across the table and they can re-use what lands in their tray.