As I mentioned in the other Wedding Cake Week posts, the decoration on these cakes was really clean and minimal: just a handful of pressed, edible violas on the top of each cake and two gingerbread bride & groom toppers on the middle, coffee tier.

In today’s post, I’ll be sharing how I made these gingerbread toppers, including the full gingerbread recipe that I used (which is a great recipe for a purpose like this, because it lasts for so long: no stale gingerbread here!).

A little gender-related disclaimer at this point: throughout this post, I have referred to the gingerbread figure with trousers as the ‘gingerbread man’ and the gingerbread figure with a skirt as the ‘gingerbread woman’: this is just for clarity, because, at the wedding that this cake was for, that is an accurate representation of the bride and groom and what they wore! Obviously, you can make a bride wearing trousers, a groom wearing a dress, two grooms, two brides, or just two gingerbread people wearing whatever you’re capable of recreating in icing!

Table of Contents

• The Idea & Design
• Making the Gingerbread Dough
• Baking the Gingerbread People
• Decorating the Gingerbread Toppers
  • Making the Bouquet
  • Piping on the Decorations
• Assembling the Toppers
• Attaching the Toppers to the Cake
• Recipe

The Idea & Design

Though not particularly in vogue these days, traditional wedding cakes often feature a little pair of bride & groom figurines sat on top (though I believe this is more of an American tradition than a British one?). I guess this was just to remind guests that they were, in fact, at a wedding.

When I first started sketching out some designs for this cake, I had the random idea to replicate this tradition using edible figurines made of gingerbread, instead. Lucky for me, the bride & groom in question (my brother and new sister-in-law) loved the idea, so I got to run with it!

I really wanted to lean into the gingerbread man aesthetic, rather than the bride-and-groom aesthetic, with these toppers, so, while both have a little nod to the occasion in their individual decoration, I knew I wanted to keep the icing pretty minimal and gingerbread-esque. In the end, I gave them both basic little faces (two eyes and a mouth, standard stuff), then gave the groom a little bow tie and some buttons, and the bride a bouquet of flower paste daisies (the easiest of the flowers to make out of sugar paste).

I was also aware that, at the venue, the cake could be viewed from all around, so I didn’t want the back of the gingerbread people to look ugly. In the end, I opted to sandwich two identical gingerbread bride/grooms together (much like an Oreo), so that the cake looked the same from the front and the back.

Making the Gingerbread Dough

I decided to use the ‘gingerbread’ dough recipe that my family has used every year for our gingerbread house, because I know that it holds up really well over time and can sit out at room temperature for as long as needed without going stale. I say ‘gingerbread’ in inverted commas because the recipe we use isn’t actually gingerbread, but this Finnish Spiced Biscuit recipe. I did want the biscuits to have more of a classic, ‘gingerbread’ flavour though, so I adapted the base biscuit recipe to use a different combination of spices, so that we could have the best of both worlds.

I actually made a lot of gingerbread dough, because I was making loads of gingerbread people as the wedding favours, as well as the cake toppers! (If I’m being completely honest, I currently still have a double batch of dough in the freezer after a little… quantity miscalculation… so, if anyone fancies some gingerbread men, hit me up, I guess?). For the toppers themselves, you actually need very little dough: just enough to cut out 4 people (2 brides and 2 grooms), though I recommend making extra to practise your decoration on!

Baking the Gingerbread People

For the gingerbread grooms, I just used a regular, gingerbread man cookie cutter and baked them as they were.

For the gingerbread brides, I had to get a little creative. I went back and forth over how to decorate the gingerbread brides, because I knew I didn’t want anything too fussy or elaborate and I also knew that, every year, when I decorate the gingerbread people for our Christmas gingerbread house, it’s decorating the gingerbread women that causes me the most grief! I guess it’s just very hard to make a gingerbread dress look good. Eventually, I decided to skip the dress and give the gingerbread bride a bouquet of flowers, instead, which felt much more achievable!

I did, however, quickly realise that the gingerbread bride’s arms would be in the wrong position for holding a bouquet of flowers. After a successful trial, I found that I could gently bend the arms of the cut out gingerbread cookies inwards before baking them. They come apart slightly when baked, so you can afford to press them quite close together in the middle, but they do bake in that position, which was exactly what I needed.

The only thing you have to be slightly mindful of is that, if the gingerbread dough is a bit dry at this stage, it can break/crack as you bend it inwards. This isn’t the end of the world: the cookies will still keep the shape, they’ll just have slightly messier edges. I recommend doing the gingerbread women first, while the dough is still at its most pliable, and bending the arms of each one immediately after cutting them out, to minimise the likelihood of this happening.

Decorating the Gingerbread Toppers

Making the Bouquet

Making the daisies for the bouquet was super easy: I just rolled out some sugar florist paste super thinly, then used a small, flower-shaped cutter to stamp out some little flower shapes. I used these plunge cutters for this (specifically, the second smallest one), because it makes getting the tiny flowers out super easy and the little pointed plunger helps to give the flowers some definition.

I then tinted a small amount of royal icing yellow using Colour Mill’s Aqua Blend formula in the shade Yellow (if I’m being honest, I was aiming for a slightly more subtle shade of yellow, but we live and learn), put it into a piping bag, fitted with a very fine, round tip, and piped little dots of colour into the centre of each daisy. Royal icing doesn’t contain oil, so I find that the Aqua Blend formula gives the best, most even colour.

I let the flowers dry out and harden up overnight at room temperature, then I was ready to use them in my decoration!

Piping on the Decorations

I used royal icing to decorate (and assemble) these gingerbread toppers, because it hardens up completely once set, so there was less likelihood of any unwanted smushing in transit. Royal icing is deceptively easy to make: you literally put the icing sugar, egg white and lemon juice in a bowl and whisk (using an electric mixer, if you value your arms), until its smooth and thick. That’s it!

Once the icing was made, I put it into a piping bag fitted with a small, round piping tip, ready to pipe on the little gingerbread faces and accessories.

If you have a piping tip coupler, I’d recommend using it for the white icing here. You’ll need to use two different tips for the white icing on these cookies: a fine round tip and a slightly wider round tip, so a coupler makes things much easier! If you don’t have one, you can just use two piping bags instead.

I definitely recommend having a few gingerbread people to hand to practise on, so that you can make sure you’re happy with the technique and your designs before you get to work on the real ones.

For the gingerbread grooms, I piped a simple face (as I said, just two dots for eyes and a curved line for the smile), then added a little bow tie (though my brother didn’t wear a bow tie, so I suppose this was just artistic license) and three dots for buttons.

For the gingerbread brides, I piped the same face, then added a generous splodge of icing to the space between the two bent arms and carefully pressed three of the little sugarpaste daisies into that, to make the bouquet. That was it! Simple, but I think it was very effective.

I let the gingerbread people sit out overnight, so that the icing had a chance to harden before I attempted to stick the two halves together (again, to limit the risk of any unwanted smushing). I sealed the piping bag up using some food clips and placed it into a resealable bag (with the extra air removed before sealing), so that it wouldn’t dry out overnight and I could use it again the next day.

Assembling the Toppers

To ensure the toppers stayed upright on the cake, I decided to sandwich a cake pop stick between the two cookie halves, which I could push into the cake at the venue to keep everything secure. Ironically, this time around, the process was super easy for the gingerbread bride and… less straightforward for the gingerbread groom!

For the bride, I just placed a single cake pop stick down the centre of her body, because her skirt conceals it at the bottom. For the groom, I had to place two separate cake pop sticks, one down each leg. It’s important that the cake pop sticks are parallel, to distribute the pressure evenly, so I lined them up from the bottom point of each foot to the corresponding shoulder. With the cookie cutter I used, there was just enough space for this, so it worked out well.

To assemble the toppers, I started by piping a (pretty) thick outline of icing just inside the perimeter of one half of the gingerbread bride/groom (on the undecorated underside, of course), being careful not to go too close to the edge, as the icing does squish outwards a little as you sandwich the cookies.

To protect the icing decorations on the other side, I set the gingerbread cookies face down on some gently crumpled kitchen paper while I worked.

I then filled in the outline with more icing, before inserting the cake pop stick(s), swivelling them gently to ensure they were completely coated in icing and sandwiching the other gingerbread half on top, making sure they were nicely aligned. Again, I set them aside overnight (still sitting on the crumpled kitchen paper), to give the icing a chance to harden up and set.

Attaching the Toppers to the Cake

As I mentioned, I placed the toppers on the cake at the venue, just so that it was one less thing to worry about on the journey down.

I transported the toppers in sealed plastic food containers (leftover from the copious takeaways I needed to get me through the past few months). I lined each container with the gently crumpled kitchen paper, then placed the toppers inside, followed by another layer of kitchen paper, making sure that no pressure was placed on the toppers when the lid was shut. The kitchen paper protected the decorated surfaces and also prevented the toppers from moving around too much during transit.

At the venue, after I had transferred the coffee cake to its stand, I lined the toppers up on the surface, pressing down gently so that the cake pop sticks made slight indentations in the crusted buttercream beneath them. I then used a wooden skewer to poke holes where the cake pop sticks would go, before gently pushing the gingerbread toppers in.

The reason I used the skewer first was to minimise the force I needed to apply on the gingerbread toppers: they’re pretty sturdy, so I don’t think they’d break, but I wasn’t about to risk it!

I pushed the gingerbread toppers right in, so that you couldn’t see any cake pop stick (or, at least, this was the intention— the photos beg to differ!) and so that it looked like the gingerbread bride and groom were just stood right on top of the cake, then I exhaled forcefully and thanked the gingerbread gods that everything had gone successfully.

And that, everybody, is the story of how I made the bride and groom gingerbread toppers for this wedding cake (and ended up with a ridiculous amount of gingerbread dough in my freezer). Hope you enjoyed it!

Recipe

Print

Gingerbread Wedding Cake Toppers

A classic, long-lasting gingerbread man recipe, adapted into cute little toppers for a wedding cake.

Course Dessert, Snack

Cuisine American, Finnish

Keyword Gingerbread, Royal icing, Wedding cake

Prep Time 2 hours hours

Cook Time 8 minutes minutes

Chill time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 2 hours hours 25 minutes minutes

Servings 14 biscuit sandwiches

Equipment

• 1 gingerbread woman cookie cutter
• 1 gingerbread man cookie cutter
• 2 baking trays lined with greaseproof paper.
• 1 plunger flower cutter (see Note 1).
• 2-3 piping bags (see Note 2).
• 1 very fine, round piping tip (see Note 2).
• 1 small, round piping tip (see Note 2).
• 1 medium round piping tip (see Note 2).
• Cake pop sticks

Ingredients

For the gingerbread dough:

• 140 g unsalted butter, softened.
• 100 g golden caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 100 ml golden syrup
• 4 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1 pinch fine sea salt
• 1 lemon, zest only.
• 450 g plain flour, sifted.

For the royal icing:

• 200 g icing sugar, sifted.
• 1 egg white
• 1 tsp lemon juice

For the sugar daisies:

• 10 g white sugar florist paste (see Note 3).
• Yellow food colouring (see Note 4).

Instructions

• Cream the butter and 50g of the sugar together until pale and fluffy.
• In a separate bowl, whisk the egg with the remaining 50g of sugar until thick and pale (the ribbon stage).
• Mix the bicarbonate of soda into the golden syrup, then pour into the butter mixture and mix well. Add the egg mixture to the butter mixture and mix again.
• Add the spices, salt, lemon zest and flour and mix thoroughly to form a dough.
• Wrap the dough in clingfilm and place into the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

Cut out and bake the gingerbread people:

• Preheat the oven to 190°C (conventional oven, not fan).
• Cut the chilled dough in half. On a lightly floured surface, roll half of the dough out to the thickness of a £1 coin.
• Start by cutting out the women. Stamp out the shapes using the cookie cutter, then gently bend the arms inward, pressing down gently where they meet the centre of the cookie to secure them. Carefully transfer to a baking tray, lined with greaseproof paper.
• Bake the gingerbread brides in the preheated oven for 6-8 minutes, until golden. Allow to cool on the tray for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely before decorating.
• Roll out the remaining half of the dough and use to cut out the men, leaving the arms as is this time around. Bake and cool in exactly the same way as the brides.
• Gingerbread people can be made in advance. Store in airtight container until ready to decorate.

Make the royal icing (see Note 5):

• Place the icing sugar, egg white and lemon juice in a large bowl. Whisk with an electric mixer until thick and smooth.

Make the sugar daisies:

• Dust a clean work surface with icing sugar. Roll out the florist paste as thinly as you can, then use the plunge flower cutter to cut out lots of little flowers.
• Tint a small amount of the royal icing using the yellow food colouring, then transfer to a piping bag, fitted with the smallest round tip.
• Pipe a small dot of yellow icing into the centre of each flower, then set aside to dry and harden overnight.

Decorate the gingerbread toppers:

• Place the white royal icing in a piping bag fitted with a piping tip coupler (see Note 2) and a small, round tip.
• Pipe smiley faces on all of the cookies, then a bow tie and three buttons on the grooms. On the brides, add a generous amount of icing to the space between the hands, then gently press three of the dried sugar daisies onto the icing, to form a bouquet.
• Set the gingerbread people aside at room temperature to harden before assembling.

Assemble the gingerbread toppers:

• Place half of the gingerbread people, decorated side down, on some lightly crumpled kitchen paper (this will help to protect the decorated surface).
• Switch out the piping tip on the bag of white royal icing to a slightly larger round tip (see Note 2), then use to pipe a neat outline just inside the perimeter of the shape (don't go too close to the edge, as the icing will squish out a little when you sandwich the cookies).
• Fill inside the outline with more icing, then add one cake pop stick down the centre of the brides and two down each leg (making sure the two sticks are parallel to each other) of the grooms. Gently rotate the sticks to cover them in the icing.
• Gently press another cookie, decorated side up this time, on top of the icing, to make a gingerbread sandwich. Leave the cookies on the kitchen paper overnight (at room temperature) so that the icing sets and hardens.

Attach the toppers to the cake:

• When you're ready to attach the toppers to the cake, line them up on top of the cake and press down just enough to make indents of the cake pop sticks in the buttercream.
• Use a skewer to pierce the cake, using the indents as a guide, then gently push the toppers into the cake, until the gingerbread people are sitting flush with the top of the cake and you can't see the cake pop sticks.

Notes

Notes:

1. I used the second smallest size from this pack.
2. If you have a piping tip coupler, I would recommend using it here for the white royal icing. You’ll need to pipe the white icing using two sizes of round tips, so a coupler makes it really easy to switch out the tips. If you don’t have a coupler, just use two separate piping bags: I would suggest putting about 1/3 of the icing in the bag with the smaller tip and 2/3 in the bag with the larger tip.
3. Sugar florist paste works really well for delicate flowers like this, because it’s extra stretchy and dries extra hard. I used this brand.
4. I used Colour Mill Aqua Blend in the shade Yellow. Water-based food colourings give the best results when working with royal icing.
5. You’ll need this batch of royal icing over the course of a few days (the decorations need to set in between stages!). You can keep the icing from drying out by sealing it inside the piping bag and/or a resealable food bag. Just make sure to clip the ends of the piping bag, using a food clip and remove any excess air from the food bag. 

I dream of becoming one of those amazing, gingerbread architects who make the most elaborate, inventive, super precise & gorgeous structures at Christmas every year. However, I am not an architect, I am not particularly logically minded and I am yet to master the art of precise piping. To achieve my dream, then, I must practise my gingerbread art form, and so, over the past couple of years, I have been undertaking a new gingerbread project every Christmas to learn new skills, practise old ones and, in short, become at one with the gingerbread.

Two years ago, I made a Gingerbread Christmas Market. This was particularly special to me, because I created the whole thing by myself: the idea, the templates, the construction— the whole lot. Through that project, I practised my engineering skills, my piping skills and the use of tempered chocolate in gingerbread decoration.

Last year, I wanted something a little more simple, so I decided to make my family’s traditional, classic Gingerbread House, with a few little decorative changes, here and there. The main focus of this project was finding new, exciting ways to incorporate sweets into the design, for the most Hansel and Gretel-esque house I could possibly make.

This year, I wanted to practise some different skills. I saw this Gingerbread Defender on Pinterest and I was absolutely BLOWN away! I’m not big into cars, but this felt very Christmassy and original and it really stuck with me— I couldn’t get it out of my head! The maker (@chlorosiswolff on Instagram) has actually made her templates + tutorial available for free (you can find these via the link in her Instagram bio), which is so incredibly generous & convinced me to give it a go myself! With all of the hardcore engineering work done for me, I figured this project would give me a chance to work on some new, gingerbread-related skills, including making sugar windows, using caramel glue and assembling a more complex structure. I also knew it would give me a chance to practise my piping skills, so it felt like the perfect project for this year’s gingerbread undertaking!

I made this Gingerbread Defender with my (soon to be) sister-in-law, and, while it was a daunting project, and our defender is less… precise than the original (and, unfortunately, only stood strong for 36 hours), it was SO much fun (though we both needed several naps to recover after making it)!

Table of Contents

• The Gingerbread
• Cutting out & Baking the Pieces
• Making the Sugar Windows
• Making Caramel Glue
• Using Caramel Glue
• Making Royal Icing
• Piping the Details
• The Wheels
• Final Thoughts

The Gingerbread

To make this Gingerbread Defender, I opted to use a different gingerbread dough to the one I would normally use for my gingerbread structures. My typical gingerbread recipe (that isn’t really gingerbread at all) is on the softer, thicker side, which I didn’t think would be suitable for a super detailed, complex project like this.

Instead, I used my favourite, proper gingerbread recipe, which is the Light Gingerbread Dough by Mima Sinclair, from her book Gingerbread Wonderland. I love the taste of this dough and it works so well for building— you can roll it very thin and bake it until it’s super dry, so it is nice and strong. I made one batch of the dough and it was more than enough for this project (I had a bit leftover, which I used to make a bunch of tiny gingerbread house pieces, using these cookie cutters from Søstrene Grene).

Cutting out & Baking the Pieces

It was at this point, when I was painstakingly cutting out the template pieces with a craft knife, that I began to wonder if this whole thing was a mistake. Cutting out the templates was rough and all I could think about the whole time was how I had to do it all over again, but with gingerbread dough.

To be honest, though, cutting the pieces out of gingerbread ended up being easier than cutting the paper templates out. Go figure. Freezing the rolled out dough before cutting them out helped hugely, so I’d definitely do that again in the future!

I also froze all of the cut-out pieces for about 15 minutes before baking, to help limit any spreading. After cutting out all of the pieces, I baked them at 140°C for 8-20 minutes, depending on the size of the pieces on the tray (I did try to group pieces of a similar size together, so they baked evenly). The lower oven temperature helps to fully dry out the gingerbread, without it browning too quickly, so it can be used for building.

I did get a bit of spreading, though, so I just made sure to use a small, serrated knife to trim down all of the important, structural pieces as soon as they came out of the oven, before the gingerbread hardened too much. I just placed the corresponding template on top of each piece and trimmed around it as best as I could.

Making the Sugar Windows

Now onto the most exciting part of this project (for me, at least): the sugar windows! I’ve never actually made sugar windows in any of my previous gingerbread projects, so this was something entirely new for me and I think it worked SO WELL!

I’ve heard of using crushed boiled sweets before, but a) clear boiled sweets are a little tricky to come by these days and b) what are you supposed to do if your gingerbread spreads in the oven? However, the tutorial supplied a different method, where you make a sugar syrup, cook it to hard crack stage and pour it into the window spaces of the cooled, baked gingerbread pieces. I followed the instructions exactly (although I used glucose syrup instead of corn syrup) and they turned out perfectly. Overall, the process was much easier than I expected it to be and I can definitely see myself doing this again. LOVED this.

Making Caramel Glue

Using caramel to stick a gingerbread structure together is something I’ve seen a lot of (mainly on Bake Off, let’s be real), but never actually done myself. I’ve heard caramel glue is stronger than royal icing, so it seemed like a necessary step for this more complex project.

I used the recipe for ‘Caramel Glue’ from the same Gingerbread Wonderland book, and it only took 2 attempts to get right (I accidentally crystallised the first batch). I actually took the caramel off the heat before it was done and it continued cooking in the pan so much that within a minute it was very nearly burnt! However, I just caught it in time and from then on I had no problems with keeping it at the right consistency: I just set it over a very low heat while we assembled the car.

Using Caramel Glue

The caramel glue was… a little hard to use. The tutorial said to brush it onto the pieces, but this was actually quite tricky? I also don’t think it worked as well as I expected it to at keeping the pieces stuck together— there was definitely some movement (the back wheel fell off about 10 times)! My biggest problem with the caramel glue, though, was the weeping! I wonder if our kitchen environment is just too humid for using caramel, because it got quite sticky (making the joins less secure), it wept quite a bit (actually through the royal icing overnight, which made it look like… brown snow… which is not the vibe at all) and the icing didn’t stick so well over the top, which was a whole thing. Also, after a day and a half, our Gingerbread Defender did, sadly, collapse (RIP). Overall, I feel caramel glue should work well for gingerbread assembly and I’m very glad that I’ve tried it (a new skill!), but I think I’ll stick to my faithful royal icing in the future!

Also, a quick note here, I think you need more caramel glue than the tutorial calls for! I ran out towards the end, which was a bit stressful. I could have just made more, but I was kind of sick of it by that point…

Making Royal Icing

The original tutorial suggests using a thick glacé icing for this project, but I decided to use a royal icing instead, because it would dry hard and I think it’s just better for piping finer details. To make the icing, I just whisked together 400g of icing sugar, 2 egg whites and 2 tsp of lemon juice until smooth and thick. I ended up using about 3/4 of the icing in total.

Piping the Details

I… am not the best at piping fine line work (I blame my shaky hands). I think, together though, we did pretty well! I’d still like to practise this a little more, and I think I probably should have used a slightly finer piping tip for extra precision, but it’s pretty recognisable as a car, right?

Also, piping the icicles was a lot of fun. That was my favourite part! Let’s not talk about the huge gob of icing I managed to drop on the back wheel though… that was an unfortunate mistake…

The Wheels

The wheels gave us the most strife, which was unfortunate, seeing as they are supposed to bear the weight of the whole structure (which I still can’t quite fathom). We ran into lots of problems with the wheels: one ended up all tilted after the attached skewer slipped in the caramel while it was setting, one snapped off its skewer after I dropped it (that was obviously my fault), the skewers on the base of the car kept falling off (see aforementioned caramel troubles) and the whole wire-binding thing was troublesome and unsuccessful (for us, at least!).

Ultimately, we had to improvise. We ended up jacking the car up on a large hunk of marzipan (pictured above, camouflaged by hastily applied royal icing!), then removing the wheels from their smaller skewers and just propping them up against the central skewers, in the right position. We also covered the serving board in a thin layer of royal icing, so that the marzipan/wheels had something to stick into, then attached the car to the marzipan with a little more icing. The marzipan we used was golden marzipan, so it was quite visible and, at the last moment, I decided to try and human pretzel myself so that I could cover it in royal icing, while it was under the car. If you’re doing this, you should definitely add the icing before you put the car on top.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I was SO proud of our (slightly wonky) Landrover. She was a bit askew, she was a bit weepy and she was a bit improvised, but she’s one of the most complicated gingerbread projects I’ve ever undertaken, so I’m still very pleased with the whole experience. Making it was a chaotic process, but it was a lot of fun (and I definitely couldn’t have done it by myself— thank you, Amy!).

Here’s what I learned…

• Freezing sheets of the rolled out dough is a game-changer and makes cutting out the more detailed pieces SO much easier.
• Caramel Glue is not my vibe. I tried it, I had fun (and only burned myself twice), but it’s not for me.
• Sugar windows on the other hand, are absolutely my vibe and I want to make them all of the time. Will they be fun to eat? Probably not. Do they look absolutely incredible? Yes, yes they do.
• Icing covers a multitude of sins. Truly, once we added the decorative icing onto the car, it looked 1000x better (until the caramel weeped through, but we don’t talk about that).
• And, additionally, icing sugar covers even more sins! After the caramel weeped, I dusted the whole thing liberally with icing sugar for the photos and it really worked wonders.
• Use a smaller piping tip than you think for detail work. Also, speed is your friend when it comes to piping straight lines.
• Snowflake sprinkles make everything look festive. You can’t argue with the facts.

And that was my gingerbread undertaking for 2024! I learned a lot, I had a lot of fun and I fully intend to never make a Gingerbread Defender again.

Gemma

xxx

That’s right: 24 days, 24 posts— the Gemma At Home Advent Calendar, if you will. I have so many fun and festive posts planned this year and I can’t wait to share them with you in the run up to my favourite holiday.

Just like last year, the first post of Blogmas At Home is my festive, December setup in my bullet journal. For my theme this year, I decided to pay homage to one of the most iconic Christmas treats: gingerbread cookies!

Table of Contents

• Equipment
• Making the ‘Gingerbread Cookies’
• Cover + Quote Page
• Monthly Calendar
• Blog + Advent Memories
• Weeklies
  • Week 1
  • Week 2
  • Week 3
  • Week 4
• December Review
• Final Thoughts

Equipment

To make this setup, I used the following equipment:

• Sakura Gelly Roll: 10 Bold, white.
• Brown craft paper.
• Uni Pin Fine Line pen: 0.5, sepia.
• Sakura Quickie Glue pen.
• Corner rounder.
• Pencil.
• Ruler.
• Scissors.

Making the ‘Gingerbread Cookies’

Before I started setting up the spreads for this month, I made all of the ‘gingerbread cookies’ that I would need to decorate the pages. To do that, I started by sketching out a variety of festive shapes on the back of my brown craft paper (my craft paper has a rough side and a smooth side, so the ‘back’ was the rough side). I tried to cut out as many shapes as I could think of, including:

• Hearts
• Stars
• Circles
• Christmas trees
• Gingerbread houses
• Candy canes
• Gingerbread men
• 6-pointed stars (to be decorated like snowflakes)

I filled a whole piece of A4 paper with the shapes, then (rather painstakingly, I admit) cut them all out. I then flipped them over (so the pencil marks were on the back) and used my white Gelly Roll pen to decorate them, as if they were gingerbread cookies and the white ink was icing.

I just had fun with the decorating, trying out different designs and patterns so that I had a whole variety of ‘cookies’. For the most part, I tried to outline each shape with my pen, to make them feel extra cookie-ish, but sometimes (particularly with the snowflakes), I skipped that.

Once I had all my decorated ‘cookies’, I set them aside to dry completely (so I didn’t have to worry about the ink smudging!) before using them in my spreads. I stuck them into the spreads with my Quickie Glue Pen, laying them out on each page first to check that I was happy with the position.

Cover + Quote Page

Aside from the rather elaborate ‘cookies’, I really wanted to keep the rest of these spreads super minimal, so that the gingerbread cookies were the main focus, so I only used the Uni Pen Fine Line pen for all of the writing/line work throughout the whole setup. I also opted to keep the fonts super simple: I just used a quick, messy cursive and a simple block capital style.

For the Cover Page, I wrote the heading in the middle of the page, then stuck in some of my favourite ‘cookies’ around it.

For the Quote Page, I opted to use a quote from one of my favourite Christmas films: The Santa Clause. The line “Seeing isn’t believing, believing is seeing” is spoken by Judy the Elf, who is an absolute icon (I nearly went for “Thanks, but I’m seeing someone in wrapping.”, which is also said by Judy and is one of my favourite lines in the whole film, but I felt it wasn’t very pertinent to this spread/my life right now, as I am not, in fact, seeing someone in wrapping). Again, I added more ‘cookies’ to this page, including a gingerbread house cookie (with an artful candy cane hiding behind it).

Monthly Calendar

For my Monthly Calendar spread, I just drew out a really simple grid (6×6 grid squares per day). I wrote in the dates in the top right-hand corner of each box (let’s not discuss the extra ‘1’ in the first box… I changed my mind with the placement) and wrote the name of the month at the bottom. Then, I went wild with the ‘cookies’ and stuck them absolutely anywhere I could find space. It was fun.

Blog + Advent Memories

These spreads are a little different this month, because December is such a funny month in general, but I know they’ll be really useful.

On the left-hand page, I have my Blog Planning spread, which I usually include, but this one is actually for my January posts, not my December posts! That’s because I’ve been keeping track of my Blogmas At Home 2024 posts digitally (there’s a lot to keep track of), so I don’t need the space here and I figured I might as well use it to give myself a bit of a head start going into the new year.

On the right-hand page, we have my Advent Memories spread, where I plan to write down the fun, festive things I do each day in the run up to Christmas. I haven’t been including Daily Sunshine spreads in my monthly setups lately (where I write down one positive thing that happened each day), because I just haven’t been keeping up with them, but I think a list of all the things I got up to during Advent would be a lovely thing to look back on in the future.

Weeklies

Into my weekly spreads now and I’ve gone for the same layout that I’ve been using for the past couple of months: trimmed down pages in the middle that house my daily task lists, with the spaces on either side used for my general task lists. I’ve been finding this layout really useful, so I’m continuing on with it this month.

As always, I’ve covered the cut edges of the journal paper with folded pieces of the brown craft paper, because I have an (irrational?) fear of paper cuts. This time around, though, I also used a corner rounder to round out the cut corners too, to add a little softness to the spread.

I plan to use the space on the left to keep track of any Blogmas At Home-related tasks I may have, and the space on the right for any other, more general tasks I need to complete.

Week 1

The first day of December falls on a Sunday, so I opted to include it in my first weekly spread and make an 8-day ‘week’, instead of setting up a whole spread for a single day! Again, let’s just not discuss how I accidentally wrote ‘MONDAY’ for the 1st of the month and then tried (and failed) to change it to ‘SUNDAY’ (I swear, I do this EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH.)

Week 2

The second weekly spread was a regular ol’ 7-day week, so I opted for my standard, 2×4 layout (with a couple of ‘cookies’, where I could squeeze them in, to decorate).

Week 3

The third weekly spread is exactly the same as the second, but I switched up the position of the heading section (and, of course, started out by writing the wrong date… again). I managed to fit more ‘cookies’ on this one, though, so let’s just look at the positives!

Week 4

For the final weekly, I opted to squish in the final two days of December (which fall on a Monday and a Tuesday) and make a massive, 9-day week (I was feeling lazy).

December Review

Finally, we have my December Review page. I’ve kept this one very similar to its previous iterations: on the right-hand page, I have the heading and a space to stick in a polaroid from the month gone by (along with a copious amount of ‘cookies’, including a gingerbread house street along the bottom!).

On the left-hand page, I have my usual sections (ATP & WTA Top 10, #1 Memory and Monthly Playlist), but I’ve changed up the layout a bit this time around (100% so I could maximise the space for more ‘cookies’). Also, because the tennis season has officially finished now, these ranking lists will be for the year-end Top 10s. For the playlist section, I’ve included 6 spaces to write down 6 of my favourite songs from December (and I am fully expecting all 6 of them to be festive tunes!).

Final Thoughts

Overall, I’m SO happy with how this setup turned out. I admit, cutting out all of the ‘cookies’ was a bit of a task, but I just put the TV on, went about my cutting mission and, honestly, it went by much more quickly than I expected! I had a lot of fun decorating the ‘cookies’: I’m not the best at piping, so it was nice to mimic the effect without the need for, you know, actual piping.

I also think this spread is really festive, even though the colour scheme is pretty muted. It has a chic, but also kind of cutesy, vibe, which I really love and perfectly encompasses how I’m feeling about the Christmas season this year, so this one’s an all-round win for me.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this setup! What’s your December theme this year?

Gemma

xxx

Last year, I went all out with my gingerbread construction and made a Gingerbread Christmas Market, complete with a kransekake Christmas tree and little stalls selling different goods. It was my magnum opus. I won’t lie though… it was INTENSE. I ended up covered in icing and very worn out, so, this year, I went back to basics (well, almost).

For as long as I can remember, the gingerbread house in our family has been the ‘Finnish fairy-tale house’ from the December 2002 issue of BBC Good Food magazine, which was a recipe shared by a woman called Mira Paren. We always use that recipe for our gingerbread dough, and, when I’m not running away with some crazy gingerbread Christmas market concept, we typically follow the basic construction for the house too. This year, we went for that traditional house again, but with a few extra decorations to make it super special.

While this post is not a recipe, nor a tutorial, I thought I would show you around the gingerbread house that my mum and I made together this year- kind of a ‘Hey MTV, welcome to my (gingerbread) crib’ situation. Let’s get into the House Tour, shall we?

Table of Contents

• The Basic Construction
• The Decorations
  • The Roof
  • The Chimney
  • The Fence
  • The Paving Stones
  • The Windows
  • The Chimney Breast
  • The Front Door
  • The People, Animals + Tree
• Final Thoughts

The Basic Construction

As I mentioned, we use the same recipe for our gingerbread house dough every year. I actually posted that recipe on the blog last year- you can find it here. It’s not technically gingerbread (it doesn’t actually even contain ginger) but it is DELICIOUS and super sturdy, so it’s great for building with. Also, side note at this point: I never knew there were people who made gingerbread houses with no intention of eating them…? I am BAFFLED- why would you go to all that trouble just to throw it away?! I’ve seen this trend at the moment of using hot glue to assemble it and I just… it breaks my sugar-loving heart. We always eat our gingerbread house and it is always delicious and I absolutely would not have it any other way. We used royal icing to stick this house together and it worked perfectly.

When cutting out all of the gingerbread pieces, we always do the building pieces first, then the people/figures/trees and then, finally, all of the scraps and remaining dough is kneaded together and rolled into one big base piece.

The structure of this gingerbread house is pretty simple: it is just 2 square(-ish) walls, 2 end walls (with gables)and 2 rectangular roof pieces. It also has a chimney (4x little rectangle pieces, 2 of them with triangles cut out at the bottom, so that the chimney can sit flush against the ridge of the roof).

In terms of people/figures, we opted to keep it simple this year and just do one man and one woman (nominally my mum and dad), as opposed to the whole family that we usually do! There’s not tons of space around the house, so we tried to keep the figures to a minimum. We did also include our dog though (but I had to cut her out freehand because we don’t have a dog-shaped cutter, so she’s a little bit squiffy). Around the back, we have a tree and a reindeer, because, after all, it is Christmas.

The Decorations

The Roof

We always use Smarties for the roof tiles, which is what the original recipe did. I think it makes the whole thing look so cheerful (plus it makes the roof pieces super tasty to eat).

The Chimney

To decorate the chimney, we just covered it in royal icing. Whenever I’m left unsupervised for more than a second, I always end up filling the chimney with Jelly Tots. I have no explanation for this other than I think it looks funny.

Also, side note: have Jelly Tots changed shape? Last I remember they were flatter, with only a slight dome, whereas now they just resemble slightly smaller American Hard Gums?!

The Fence

The marshmallow fence is another design feature that came from the original recipe. They probably wouldn’t keep any intruders out, but they taste good so we’ll let it slide.

The Paving Stones

Again, from the original recipe- we stick a few giant chocolate buttons leading up to the front door to act as little paving stones. I had actually planned to use Cadbury Twisted buttons for this, but they ended up looking a little bit too much, so we just went with the classic plain ones.

The Windows

This was one of my new ideas for this year: After Eight shutters. I sometimes find that, in the midst of all of the other decorations, the windows get a little neglected and end up looking a bit lacklustre, compared to the rest of the house- I thought that adding some dark shutters for contrast might help to liven them up a little bit. I didn’t want to bother with tempering dark chocolate or anything, so I had the idea to use chopped up After Eights (which are mint chocolate thins). I cut a single After Eight into quarters, then cut two of the quarters in half to make 4 little shutters (2 for each window). I snacked on the leftovers, obviously.

For the windows themselves, I just piped them on using the royal icing- I know lots of gingerbread houses have boiled sweet/gelatine sheet windows, but I think that’s a little beyond my capabilities at the moment!

The Chimney Breast

Okay, the chimney breast is another of my slightly rogue ideas- but I’ve actually been doing it for a couple of years now because I like it so much! I use a Curly Wurly as a ‘chimney breast’- I just trim it to the size of the back wall (closest to the chimney, because, obviously, we’re all about realism here) and stick it on with royal icing.

For the little stones on the chimney breast, I used these mini jazzies from Waitrose. I just piped some royal icing into each of the holes in the Curly Curly and pressed the mini jazzies onto those splodges. I used to use Jelly Tots for this, but they are the wrong shape now (see my earlier Jelly Tot rant), so I had to use these- honestly, I think I like them even better!

The Front Door

Like the windows, the front door is often a bit of an afterthought on our gingerbread houses. This year, I was determined to give it some love and attention. Admittedly, my initial plan did not work out- I tried to create a little door canopy using two After Eights and some trimmed candy canes, but it wasn’t sturdy enough. In the end, we used two (different) After Eights to make a kind of ‘farmhouse’ style Dutch door (side note: I just googled what those were called and it never occurred to me that that was why the bullet journalling community calls cutting away some of the paper a Dutch door! The more you know…). I also stuck a mini M&M on as the handle.

To decorate around the door, we stuck two candy canes (my mum trimmed these down to remove the curved part- she actually used some secateurs to do this and it was much easier than trying to chop them with a knife) on either side and made a little evergreen garland above it. To do that, I just piped on a good amount of royal icing, then used tweezers to stick these holly sprinkles (also from Waitrose) into the icing.

The People, Animals + Tree

It suddenly occurred to me, as I was sticking the people into the icing beside the house, that giving the gingerbread man fancy little buttons and the gingerbread woman an apron was… problematic. In my defence, my mum and I were both wearing aprons at the time (though, then again, my dad was not wearing a shirt…). It’s just what we’ve always done, but I’ve never thought about the questionable gender roles at play before! Maybe next year I’ll give the gingerbread woman a little power suit to remind her that the world is her oyster. Then again, I spend half my time in an apron, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, so maybe I’ll just give the gingerbread man an apron too! Yeah, I think that’s the vibe.

Anyway, I just used royal icing to decorate the people (and the dog). I kept things simple (no faces) because I didn’t want to tempt fate. For the reindeer, I used royal icing for the eye, then used a little more icing to stick on a red mini M&M for the nose. For the tree, I did little swoops of icing as garlands and then I stuck on some Jelly Tots as the decorations.

Final Thoughts

I think this might just be… my favourite gingerbread house we’ve ever had! It’s fun and it’s covered in sweets and it’s cute and I KNOW it will be tasty- I’m very proud of this one. It’s giving… Hansel and Gretel, without the prospect of being baked alive. Good times.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my Gingerbread House Tour. Do you make a gingerbread house at Christmastime? Let me know in the comments below!

Gemma

xxx

Table of Contents

• The You’re On Your Own, Kid Cupcake: Explained
• Sugar Daisies
• Blackberry Compote
• Gingerbread Cupcakes
• Filling the Cupcakes
• Cream Cheese Icing
• Assembling the Cupcakes
• Recipe

The You’re On Your Own, Kid Cupcake: Explained

The You’re On Your Own, Kid Cupcake has 4 main elements:

• Gingerbread cake
• Blackberry compote
• Cream cheese icing
• Sugar daisies

It took me a little while to work out what kind of flavours I wanted to use for this cupcake. In the end, I decided to focus on one of the song’s major recurring themes: seasons changing, specifically, summer turning to autumn and, eventually, winter. We can see this theme in the very first line: ‘Summer went away’, but it is picked up again (albeit more subtly), in the first line of the chorus, where Swift sings ‘From sprinkler splashes to fireplace ashes’. I wanted this cupcake to encapsulate that late summer/early autumn feeling, when the nights are getting longer and the weather is cooling down. Luckily, here in the UK, we’ve just been living through that period of the year, so I had plenty of inspiration all round me.

Eventually, I decided on a blackberry and gingerbread cupcake. Gingerbread is such a quintessentially autumn/winter thing for me- I associate it so strongly with Halloween, with Bonfire Night and with Christmas. Blackberry season falls in late summer/early autumn, so it felt like a perfect addition to these cakes (also, we have an abundance of blackberries stashed in our freezer from my parent’s blackberry-picking endeavours this year, so it all worked out!). To get the blackberry flavour into the cakes, I made a homemade compote, which I used to both fill and decorate the cupcakes.

I opted to ice these cupcakes with cream cheese icing because I thought that it would compliment both the gingerbread and blackberry flavours best. To add even more blackberry flavour (and an extra bit of decoration), I swirled some more compote into the icing. Coincidentally (and rather grotesquely- sorry!), this also ended up as a bit of an accidental nod to another line in the song: ‘I looked around in a blood-soaked gown’, so there’s that, too.

For decoration, there were two lines from the song that I really wanted to draw on for inspiration: ‘So long, Daisy May’ (random, I know, but I just like it) and ‘So make the friendship bracelets’. The latter line has become a really significant part of Swift’s recent Eras Tour, with fans making their own friendship bracelets to trade with each other, so I felt I absolutely had to include some sort of reference to it with this cupcake. I decided to make edible daisies from sugar florist paste, then arrange them around the iced cupcake in a circle, like a sort-of daisy chain friendship bracelet. I really love how it turned out!

Essentially, then, these are gingerbread cupcakes, filled with homemade blackberry compote, topped with cream cheese icing and more compote, then decorated with an edible daisy ‘friendship bracelet’. I think they look so pretty and I can confirm that they taste DELICIOUS.

Let’s get into some specifics, shall we?

Sugar Daisies

You need to start by making the edible daisy decorations, because they need a while to dry out and harden up. For each You’re On Your Own, Kid Cupcake, you’ll need about 12 daisies. That, of course, is if you plan to decorate your cupcakes like me, with a friendship bracelet of daisies all around the edge of the cupcake. You can absolutely decorate your cupcakes however you please with as many, or as few, daisies as you would like.

To make the daisies, you will need the following ingredients:

• White sugar florist paste (I used this brand).

Ideally, you want to use sugar florist paste to make the flowers. It’s very similar to sugar paste, modelling paste and even fondant, but it has a few unique attributes that make it perfect for this: firstly, unlike fondant and sugar paste it dries completely hard, so your flowers will keep their shape perfectly once they have hardened. Secondly, it dries much more quickly than modelling paste, which will save you some time. Thirdly (and finally), it is quite a stretchy, flexible paste, so it is perfect for making delicate petals.

None of this is to say you can’t use the other options to make these daisies- just be aware that they might not work quite so well as the florist paste. It is a bit of a specialist item, but it is readily available online. I purchased mine from The Cake Decorating Company, which is my current go-to for specialist baking supplies.

• Marzipan

This ingredient isn’t strictly necessary- you could absolutely substitute it with more of the florist paste, or even some fondant, tinted with yellow food colouring, to make the centres of the daisies. I just happened to not have any yellow food colouring to hand, but I did have some marzipan, so I went with it.

Ironically, I actually used white marzipan for this. The brand I buy (Waitrose own) is actually a creamy yellow colour, as opposed to a perfect white, which is kind of weird, but we’ll roll with it. Essentially, you just need some sort of yellow modelling paste that you can roll into teeny-tiny little balls to place in the centre of each daisy.

• Icing sugar

Just a little, to dust your work surface/rolling pin, so that the florist paste does not stick.

• Dried split peas

A rogue inclusion, I know, but don’t worry- you won’t actually be eating these. I just found that they were the perfect size/shape to dry the flowers over, which gives the daisies a more 3D shape. As a bonus, the flat side of the split peas means they don’t roll around, which makes things much easier.

Please do take into account who will be eating your cupcakes though- obviously no one is going to suspect that their cupcake has come into contact with a split pea, so just be careful of allergies/sensitivities. If you don’t want to use split peas, you can either look for something a similar size and shape, or you can dry the flowers directly over the marzipan centres (the flowers will be a little flatter, but that is obviously preferable to accidentally poisoning your friends).

Alongside these ingredients, you will also need some specialist equipment:

• Daisy plunge cutter

I used the 19mm cutter from this pack, but you can use any daisy-shaped cutter. Plunge cutters make it much easier to keep all of the petals in tact with delicate things like this, so I prefer them here.

• A tapered/ball modelling tool

This is entirely optional, but I like to indent the daisies a little before drying them over the split peas, to help them get that 3D shape. I actually used the tapered ‘plunger’ element of one of these plunge cutters, but any small modelling tool will do really. If you don’t have one, try the end of a chopstick, or just skip this step entirely and leave the daisies to set over the split peas- they’ll be slightly less 3D, but will still have some dimension.

You will also need a rolling pin, as well as a large baking tray, lined with greaseproof paper.

Before you start, spread some of the dried split peas onto your baking tray- you’ll need 1 per flower. Position them so the flat sides are sitting against the tray and the rounded side is facing up. This is a little bit time-consuming, but it’s best to get this step out of the way now.

Once you have all of your ingredients/equipment assembled, you can start making the daisies. Knead the florist paste between your hands until it is smooth and pliable. Dust a clean work surface and rolling pin with icing sugar, then roll out the paste very thinly- plunge cutters aren’t really sharp at all, so if your paste is too thick, you won’t get a clean cut on your daisies. Once your paste is rolled out, you can cut the daisies- you’ll need about 12 per cupcake (so 144 in total!).

Once you have cut all of the daisies, place them, one at a time, into the palm of your hand, with the right side facing up. Use the modelling tool (if using) to press into the centre of the daisy, making an indent. Flip the daisy upside down and lay it over one of the split peas on the baking sheet, so that it will dry in the shape you have created. Repeat this for all of the daisies, then leave them to dry out overnight, or until hard (otherwise they won’t keep their shape). Once hard, the daisies will keep for a super long time, as long as they are stored in an airtight container and don’t get wet (if you intend to store the daisies for a long time, I recommend storing them without the marzipan centres, as marzipan contains more moisture than sugar florist paste. The marzipan will be fine for a couple of days, but any longer than that and you might encounter some sweating).

To add the yellow centres to the daisy, just take a tiny pinch of your marzipan (or other yellow modelling paste). Roll it into a ball between your dominant index finger and the palm of your non-dominant hand, then gently press it into the centre of the daisy. Repeat as needed.

Blackberry Compote

Next up, you want to make the blackberry compote, so that it can cool down in time for you to assemble the cakes. You can also make the compote ahead of time- stored in an airtight container in the fridge, it will keep for about a week. This compote only requires three ingredients:

• Frozen blackberries

I like to use frozen blackberries, just because it’s easier to find them year-round, but you can use fresh if you prefer (just be aware that the compote will probably take a little less time than stated- don’t burn it!).

• Caster sugar

You could use granulated sugar, if that’s what you have on hand- just make sure you give it enough time to dissolve fully. I wouldn’t recommend using brown sugar, because it will affect the flavour of the finished compote.

• Lemon juice

You just need a little squeeze of fresh juice, but it makes all the difference- it brings out the flavour of the blackberries, but also livens up the compote with a fresh and zingy tang.

To make the compote, place the frozen berries and the caster sugar into a small saucepan over medium heat.

Stir every now and then until the mixture starts to bubble. At this point, reduce the heat to low and simmer gently for 35-40 minutes, stirring frequently to make sure it does not catch (if you see any indications of this, turn the heat down a little more). The blackberries should break down by themselves during this time, but you can give them a little mash with a fork/the back of a spatula to help the process along.

Once the fruit has all broken down and the compote is thick and jammy (see reference photo below), take the pan off the heat.

Pass the compote through a heatproof sieve, set over an equally heatproof bowl, and use the back of a spoon to press it through. This will remove the seeds, leaving you with a smooth compote. If your compote is a bit too thin at this stage, you can return it to the saucepan and allow it to simmer gently to reduce it a little more.

The last step is to add a squeeze of lemon juice to the strained compote and mix it in well. Allow the compote to cool before transferring it to an airtight container and placing into the fridge until it’s time to assemble the cupcakes. Stored like this, it should last for about a week.

Gingerbread Cupcakes

These gingerbread cupcakes have all the flavour of a lightly spiced gingerbread, with the texture of a typical cupcake. That is to say- these cupcakes aren’t dark and sticky in the same way that a traditional gingerbread cake is, but are still warm and spicy, just a little more subtly. I like to think of them as gingerbread biscuits in cake form!

These cupcakes are super easy to make- they use my All-In-One Method for cake batter, so they come together super quickly- the hardest part is measuring the treacle!

For the cupcake batter, you will need:

• Stork

As always with my cake batters, I like to use Stork (a brand of baking margarine), because I think it makes for a lighter, fluffier cake. If you don’t want to use Stork, or can’t find it, you can substitute an equal amount of softened unsalted butter.

• Caster sugar

It’s best to use caster sugar (as opposed to granulated sugar) when using the All-In-One Method, because it incorporates into the batter more quickly.

• Self-raising flour

It’s important to use self-raising flour to help the cupcakes rise. If you only have plain flour, you’ll need to add baking powder.

• Bicarbonate of soda

This recipe uses treacle, which is acidic, so it also contains bicarbonate of soda, which is alkaline, to balance out the flavours.

• Spices

The spices are what make these cupcakes so quintessentially gingerbread-y. I use a combination of cinnamon, ginger and cloves for a warm and spicy gingerbread flavour.

• Eggs

As with all of my recipes, I use large eggs.

• Milk

Ideally, you should use whole milk for all baking. I very rarely have whole milk in the house, so I almost always used skimmed milk and I’ve never had any problems, so just use whatever you have.

• Treacle

You don’t need much, but a little bit of treacle helps to lend that iconic gingerbread flavour to these cupcakes. If you don’t have treacle, you could substitute an equal amount of molasses- the flavour may be slightly more intense, but it will still taste delicious.

Once you have all of your ingredients, you can get on with making the cupcakes. Start by lining a 12-hole cupcake tray with paper cases (I used these burgundy cases from Purple Cupcakes– the same ones I used for my Maroon cupcakes, because I thought that they matched the colour of the blackberry compote nicely), and preheat the oven 170°C.

After that, it’s simply a case of putting all of the cake batter ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment. Starting on a low speed, whisk the batter until it starts to come together, then gradually increase the speed to maximum and beat until the batter is light and fluffy- it will only take about a minute of whisking in total. For a more in-depth walkthrough of this technique, check out my Wimbledon Cake recipe, where I go through the whole thing in much more detail.

Once your batter is ready, divide it between the 12 cupcake cases. I like to use a regular-sized ice cream scoop to do this, but you can use two spoons if you prefer.

Bake the cupcakes in the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until they spring back after being touched gently. I like to remove the cupcakes from the tray as soon as they come out of the oven and transfer them to a wire rack to cool, so that the cases do not become greasy, but do be careful if you do this because they will be very hot. Allow the cupcakes to cool completely before filling/decorating.

Filling the Cupcakes

When I made these cupcakes, I swirled a little bit of blackberry compote into the batter before baking the cakes. In all honesty: it looked great, but you could barely taste it! When you’ve gone to all the trouble of making the compote, and when the blackberry plays such a big role in the ‘story’ of these cupcakes, that just wouldn’t do!

Because of this, I have written the recipe to include a different method of incorporating the blackberry compote into the cupcakes, which will really help it to live up to its fullest blackberry potential: I recommend filling the cupcakes with some fresh compote after they have baked- think like a Victoria Sponge, filled with jam, only these are Gingerbread cupcakes, filled with compote. Sounds good, right?

Filling cupcakes is super easy to do. Essentially, you just need to remove some of the cake, fill the leftover hole with compote, then add part of the removed cake back on top to seal in the filling. There are a couple of ways you can do this:

• Use an apple corer

Line the apple corer up with the centre, then apply slight pressure, while twisting slowly. The serrated edge will cut through the cupcake. Go down about half way into the cupcake, then remove the corer (along with the cut cylinder of cake). Add some compote to the cavity (you can use a jug, a spoon or even a piping bag to do this). Finally, use a small, serrated knife to trim the bottom off the cylinder of cake you removed, then push the top back into the cupcake, to seal in the filling.

• Use a knife

If you don’t have an apple corer, you can use a small, serrated knife to create the cavity. Hold the knife as close to vertical as possible, and carve out a small circle in the centre of the cupcake. Use the knife to wiggle the cake out of the circle, then fill and seal up as above.

Once all of your cupcakes are filled with compote, you can decorate them.

Cream Cheese Icing

I’ve posted a few recipes that use cream cheese icing here on the blog, so I won’t go into too much detail here. If you would like to read a full walkthrough of how to make perfectly pipeable cream cheese icing, you can find that here. Essentially though, there are two main rules you have to follow if you want a thick and smooth icing, instead of a sloppy mess:

• Use full-fat cream cheese

Trust me, low-fat just won’t work for this- you’ll end up with a super thin icing that just can’t be remedied by adding more icing sugar.

• Don’t overmix the cream cheese

Unlike butter, cream cheese doesn’t really respond well to being whipped up a lot. Try to minimise your mixing once the cream cheese has been added- this will help you to achieve a lovely, thick icing.

Not following one/both of these guidelines will inevitably leave you with soupy cream cheese icing that doesn’t hold up when piped and is kind of… unpleasant to eat? Save yourself the bother and follow my two Cream Cheese Commandments for perfect cream cheese icing, every time.

Assembling the Cupcakes

Finally, we have reached the assembly stage- in the homestretch now!

Start by putting your cream cheese icing into a piping bag, fitted with a large round tip. This time, I tried out attaching a food clip to the top of the filled bag, to prevent the icing from coming out the top and I thought it worked really well- I’ll definitely be using this trick again!

Pipe a big swirl of icing onto each cupcake- I like to start in the middle, applying an even pressure as I slowly move out and draw a circle around the circumference of the cake, then work my way up in a spiral. If you have an ever bigger piping nozzle than me, you could just keep the piping bag in the centre of the cake and lift it up gently as you apply pressure, to achieve one big dome of icing. Either way, the icing is going to be largely obscured by compote, so it doesn’t have to be too perfect.

Next up, you want to add some blackberry compote. I used a teaspoon to drizzle some right on top of the icing but, again, you could use a piping bag for more control, if you prefer.

Using a cocktail stick, or a small, sharp knife, swirl the compote into the icing a little. Don’t overdo this, or you’ll just end up with pink icing, but marbling it slightly will make the cupcakes look super pretty. Embrace the intentionally messy look!

Finally, just press the hardened sugar daisies onto the icing. I did a ring of them all around the base of the icing, to mimic the look of a friendship bracelet, but you can add the flowers wherever you want.

Et voilà! You’ve got yourself 12 blackberry and gingerbread cupcakes, inspired by ‘You’re On Your Own, Kid‘, by Taylor Swift. I hope you’ve enjoyed this 5th instalment of my Taylor Swift Cupcakes Series! Let me know what you think of the latest cupcake in the comments down below!

Gemma

xxx

Recipe

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‘You’re On Your Own, Kid’ Cupcakes

Inspired by Taylor Swift's 'You're On Your Own, Kid', these gingerbread cupcakes are filled with homemade blackberry compote, topped with a blackberry/cream cheese swirled icing and decorated with an edible daisy chain friendship bracelet- perfect for when summer goes away, but the yearning (for cake) stays.

Course Dessert, Snack

Keyword Blackberry, Compote, Cream cheese, Cream cheese icing, Gingerbread, Sugarpaste daisy, Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift Cupcakes

Prep Time 2 hours hours

Cook Time 30 minutes minutes

Drying time 12 hours hours

Servings 12 cupcakes

Equipment

• 1 19mm daisy plunger cutter (see Note 1).
• 1 tapered/ball modelling tool (see Note 2).

Ingredients

For the sugar daisies:

• 60-70 g sugar florist paste (see Note 3).
• 10-15 g marzipan (see Note 4).
• Icing sugar, for dusting.
• Dried split peas (see Note 5).

For the blackberry compote:

• 200 g blackberries (I used frozen, but you can use fresh if you have them).
• 60 g caster sugar
• 1 lemon

For the gingerbread cupcakes:

• 200 g Stork (see Note 6).
• 190 g caster sugar
• 180 g self-raising flour
• 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/8 tsp ground cloves
• 3 eggs
• 2 tbsp milk
• 3/4 tbsp treacle

For the cream cheese icing:

• 100 g unsalted butter, softened
• 160 g full-fat cream cheese
• 560 g icing sugar, sifted

Instructions

For the sugar daisies:

• Line a large baking tray with greaseproof paper. Spread out split peas (1 per cupcake) onto the tray, domed sides up, then set aside.
• Dust a clean work surface and rolling pin with icing sugar. Knead the sugar florist paste between your hands until malleable, then roll out as thinly as possible. Use the daisy-shaped plunge cutter to punch out 144 daisies (maybe a few extra, just in case!). As you make each daisy, push it out of the cutter into the palm of your hand, then use the modelling tool to press the centre of the flower to give it a cupped shape. Place each daisy upside down over a dried split pea on the lined tray and leave to harden for at least 12 hours.
• Once the daisies have hardened, make the marzipan centres. Knead the marzipan between your hands until malleable, then take a tiny pinch of the paste and roll it between the palm of your non-dominant hand and the index finger of your dominant hand, to form a tiny ball. Carefully lift a daisy off its split pea, then press the marzipan ball into the centre, where the pea has made the indent. Repeat for all the daisies and set aside in a cool, dry place until ready to decorate.

For the blackberry compote:

• Place the blackberries and sugar into a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir every now and then, until the mixture starts to bubble, then turn the heat down to low and simmer gently for 35-40 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent the compote from sticking and to help break up the berries.
• Once the fruit has all broken down and the compote is thick and jammy, remove the pan from the heat. Pass the compote through a heatproof sieve, pushing it through with the back of a spoon, to remove the seeds.
• Add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice to the strained compote and stir it through, then transfer the compote to an airtight container and store in the fridge until ready to use, or up to a week.

For the gingerbread cupcakes:

• Preheat the oven to 170°C. Line a 12-hole cupcake tin with cupcake cases and set aside.
• Place all of the cupcake ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a whisk attachment. Whisk on low speed to incorporate all of the dry ingredients, then gradually increase the speed to full, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Whisk the batter until it is light and fluffy- this shouldn't take longer than about 1 minute.
• Divide the batter between the 12 cupcake cases (I use an ice cream scoop to do this), then bake in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes, until the cakes spring back when touched gently. Immediately transfer the cakes to a wire rack (to prevent any greasy cases), then leave to cool completely before filling/decorating.

For the cream cheese icing:

• In a large bowl, beat the softened butter for 1-2 minutes with an electric mixer, until smooth and noticeably paler.
• Add the cream cheese and mix into the butter by hand until incorporated.
• Sift in the icing sugar and mix by hand until incorporated. Use electric mixer to beat for 10-15 seconds only, until fluffy, but still thick and stiff. Transfer the icing to a piping bag, fitted with a large, round nozzle, ready to pipe onto the cakes.

To fill the cupcakes:

• Once the cakes are completely cool, use an apple corer/sharp knife to remove a small circle of cake from the top of each cupcake. Use a spoon or piping bag to fill the cavity with a small amount of blackberry compote, then trim the bottoms of the removed cake pieces and insert the tops back into the holes, to seal in the filling.

To decorate:

• Pipe a large swirl of cream cheese icing onto each cupcake. Use a spoon or piping bag to drizzle a small amount of blackberry compote on top of the icing, then use a sharp knife/cocktail stick to swirl it in. Press 12 sugar daisies into the icing, all around the base of the swirl, to give the appearance of a daisy chain-inspired friendship bracelet.
• Because of the cream cheese icing, these cupcakes are best served immediately, or within 1 hour of assembling, if kept at (a cool) room temperature. They will keep for about 2 days if stored in an airtight container in the fridge.

Notes

1. Daisy plunger cutter: I used the 19mm cutter from this pack, but any daisy cutter will do. I like the plunge ones because the petals can be tricky to get out of normal cutters, but use what you have. 
2. Modelling tool: this is optional- it just helps to give your daisies more dimension. If you don’t have one, try using a chopstick instead. You could even skip this step and just set the daisies over the split peas instead, but the finished daisies will be slightly flatter.
3. Sugar florist paste: Florist paste is different to sugar paste, fondant or modelling paste- it is more flexible and dries harder. That’s not to say you can’t use the other ones to make the daisies, it might just be a little trickier/more time consuming.
4. Marzipan: I used marzipan for the centres of my flowers, because it is what I had, but you could use any sort of modelling paste (even a little sugar florist paste), dyed yellow, if you prefer. 
5. Dried split peas: worry not- you won’t actually be eating the dried split peas, they are just the perfect size/shape to dry the sugar daisies over to give them the right shape when they have hardened. You’ll need one dried split pea for each daisy.
6. Stork: as always, I like to use Stork in place of butter in my cakes, because I think it makes for a lighter, fluffier sponge. If you prefer, you can substitute the Stork for an equal amount of softened, unsalted butter. 

 

The recipes for the gingerbread cupcakes, blackberry compote and cream cheese icing have all been adapted from ‘The Crumbs and Doilies Recipe Book’ by Cupcake Jemma.

Phase 1: Conception

I am no architect. In general, I have very little practical sense, maths is not my strong suit and I often wonder if GCSE Physics was really just a fever dream. Nevertheless, I dreamt up a gingerbread project that required mathematical, architectural and functional planning, so plan I had to. Of course, I turned to The Sims. Using my hard-earned ninja building skills, acquired from hours of designing mansions for my filthy rich super-Sims, I made myself some concept art:

To be frank, I feel the Sims render was not overly necessary. The basic concept was this: big tree in middle, small stalls around tree. Pretty simple.

While I was conceptualising my magnum opus, I came across a Scandinavian celebration cake: the kransekake. I believe this translates to ‘wreath cake’, but, to me, these almond-y confections resemble a big Christmas tree. It was fate! I was sold. The central tree of my market would be a kransekake and the huts would be made of gingerbread. The conceptualisation was complete.

Phase 2: Planning

After much scouring and much being appalled at the extortionate cost of some of the tins, I finally managed to track down a kransekake tin set at a (relatively) reasonable price. It was a second hand version of this one, from Lakeland (which has been discontinued – sad face).

Once I had my tins and I could visualise how big the central kransekake would be, it was time to model the huts themselves, which I would be making out of gingerbread. I made a prototype from card, which I then used to cut out templates for each of the individual pieces. I decided to make 5 stalls, with each hut consisting of one front piece, one back piece, two side pieces, two roof pieces, 1 shelf piece, 2 long divider pieces and (at least) 4 short divider pieces:

I wanted to be able to light my huts up from the inside, using electric tea-lights, so I made sure to leave a gap on the back pieces large enough for the tea-lights. The fronts had a rectangular hole to mimic the store front. I also made a small, rectangular template to make a few chalkboard stand-up signs. I used small heart and star-shaped cutters for some merchandise and a larger star cutter to make the topper for my kransekake tree.

I then had to decide what to build my gingerbread market on, since it would be too large for a standard cake board. In the end, I found a circular piece of recycled plywood, which I wrapped tightly in foil (secured with masking tape). The plywood was roughly 50cm diameter (though, had everything gone to plan, a slightly larger board might have been preferable).

All that was left to do was to decide what each of my 5 stalls would sell and calculate the amount of gingerbread I would need to make. One of these jobs was much more enjoyable than the other. The calculation part (obviously) required a lot of maths, which was an unpleasant, yet wholly necessary, task. I worked out that I would need a double batch of my gingerbread recipe. This ended up being the perfect amount (yay for successful maths-ing!), after I broke 2 of the walls (boo…) and had enough dough to rebuild them. Phew. For the stalls, I simply selected merchandise that I loved and that I felt were easy to recreate in miniature form. I settled on: nuts, sweets, hot chocolate and cookies, and I dedicated the final store to my brother and his girlfriend, who came to spend Christmas with us (read: I was undecided about the merchandise and hoped to gain inspiration later on, while decorating).

And, with that, my gingerbread Christmas market had been conceptualised, planned and prepared. It was time to get baking!

Phase 3: Baking

I began with the gingerbread. Following my plan, I made a double batch of my usual recipe and, once it had chilled in the fridge, I cut out the shapes I needed using my templates. I tried to bake similar sized pieces together, so that they would cook evenly. Immediately after the main pieces came out of the oven, I placed the corresponding template on top of each piece and trimmed the edges with a small, serated knife. This would ensure that the pieces fit together properly later, when I was building. There is a very small time frame in which the gingerbread is soft enough to do this in (literally about 1-2 minutes). My advice is to start with the edges that truly require trimming (all the outer edges of the walls of the house, and the short sides of the shelves). The roofs can stand going untrimmed, but trimming one of the long sides (for the middle of the roof, where the two pieces join), would be helpful if you have time. It was at this stage I met my first hurdle: the combination of burnt fingertips from touching super-hot, straight-from-the-oven gingerbread and the rapid cooling of said gingerbread led to a couple of breakages. Luckily, as I said, I had just enough gingerbread to remake those unfortunate pieces!

Each stall required 13 separate pieces, as shown here:

Again, that’s one front, one back, two sides, two roofs, one shelf, two long dividers and four short dividers (though I ended up using a few more of the short dividers on each hut). I also cut out a large star, 6 blackboard signs, 5 mini stars and 5 mini hearts.

Once I had all my gingerbread pieces, I was thoroughly tired out- it was quite a process! I packed all my walls and pieces into tins, and called it a night.

The next day, I baked my kransekake. I used this recipe. However, I did run into a few issues with it. Despite giving my larger layers an extra minute of baking time, and the fact they were indeed golden on top, as Paul requested, they were underbaked (to the point where they collapsed on assembly…RIP bottom 3 layers…). I wonder, perhaps, if a lower temperature and longer bake would have been more suitable? I hope to try another recipe at some point, to compare.

With that, the baking phase was done! It was time for the next stage: decorating.

Phase 4: Decorating

Finally, it was time for the fun part! Decorating! I compiled my various sprinkles, sweets and snacks, ready to use:

To start with, I used the mini m&m’s (which are almost impossible to get in the UK- you could easily substitute them with mini Smarties if needed), the gold edible balls and the dark chocolate. (Side note: this post is absolutely not sponsored by Waitrose, despite what this layout might suggest).

I began by cutting the mini m&m’s in half. I say I, I did one and promptly let my dad take over. Yay for sous-chefs! (But seriously, thank you, Dad). You want to cut them through the side with the ‘m’ on it, so you have little almond shapes. These will form the coloured lights that are strung around the stalls.

Once I had my m&m lights at the ready, I tempered some dark chocolate (you can read more about my tempering process on this post) and put it into a piping bag with a small round tip. Using the chocolate, I piped a a slight arc across the top of the front and side pieces, to form a string for the lights. While the chocolate was still wet, I (and my dad- mainly my dad) stuck the half m&m’s onto the chocolate ‘strings’. I also piped small rectangles and ovals above the strings on the front and slightly larger versions on 5 of the 10 sides, to form the signs. On the backs, I piped around the opening for the candles and placed gold balls onto the chocolate to resemble little lights. I also attempted to pipe a little chocolate Christmas tree above the arch on each back.

As you can see, some of my attempts were more successful than others! Let’s focus on the one, perfect tree I managed to do!

Isn’t she pretty? I was very proud. I also piped rectangles of chocolate onto my blackboard signs, and ‘decorated’ (I use the term very loosely) some of the mini cookies.

While the chocolate was setting, I whipped up some royal icing. I ended up using 4 egg whites’ worth, but I made it in two separate batches, so that it wouldn’t dry up during the process. I put a small amount of the icing into a piping bag with a very small, round nozzle and used it to pipe the finishing touches on the signs. I wrote out the full name of the shops on the sides:

And then drew a little symbol for each shop on the smaller signs on the front:

Finally, I added some finishing touches to the blackboard signs/mini cookies:

And, with that, the initial decorations were complete!

Phase 5: Assembly

I feel like the assembly is the part of gingerbread-house making that feels the most daunting. What if you break your decorations? What if the whole thing collapses? Needless to say, I was very nervous. Anyway, I began by assembling my kransekake in the middle of the board (which I placed on a Lazy Susan, for ease). I spread a thin layer of icing down, then began to build the kransekake, drizzling each layer with icing in the traditional way, as Paul instructs. I think I should, perhaps, have used the finer nozzle for this, but we live and learn.

This is a delightful photo of the kransekake in process, before the bottom 3 layers (which you can see here) decided they had had enough of life at the bottom of the tower and promptly gave way, toppling the kransekake. I ended up lifting the top 15 layers up, removing the bottom 3, and putting the smaller kransekake back onto the board. It has since held up perfectly and actually fits better on the board with the houses! All’s well that ends well, I suppose. I placed the larger star gingerbread on top of the kransekake, for the finishing touch. Below is the kransekake, before the Big Squash.

Once the kransekake had been assembled, rescued and then reassembled, I began to build the stalls. Working on 1/5th of the board at a time, I spread a thin layer of icing down and built a stall directly onto the board. I began by placing the front wall, facing out, where I wanted it, then used the same piping bag I used to ice the kransekake to stick the walls together. I used the piping bag with the thinner nozzle, the one I used for writing on the signs, to stick the shelves together. I did have to break off parts of my dividers to get a good fit, but this was actually quite easy! Unfortunately, I have no photos from this stage because I was absolutely COVERED in royal icing. It was all very sticky.

My shelves were a bit top heavy, so I ended up using 2 extra small dividers per stall as supports, placing them upright on the board and using icing to stick them to the bottom of the shelves. They worked perfectly!

I repeated this process for every stall, spacing them evenly around the board. Once they were all constructed, I placed my blackboard signs randomly around the board, propping 2 up against each other and securing them with a little royal icing. After giving everything a little time to set up, I could move on to adding the finishing touches.

Phase 6: Finishing touches

The first thing that I had to do was to cover the roofs of the huts with snow. For this, I thinned my remaining royal icing slightly with water, so that it would cover the huts more easily and drip off the edge a little, mimicking icicles. I hope you can see that in the pictures!

I then used a little more royal icing to stick down the ‘merchandise’ in each tray. For the hot chocolate stand, I divided the shelf into 3 sections and filled one with chopped milk chocolate, one with chopped white chocolate and one with micro marshmallows (seriously, micro, not mini- they’re even smaller!).

For the sweet stall, I again divided the shelf into 3 and filled the individual sections with mini jazzies, mini fudge chunks and crushed candy canes.

For Ben and Amy’s stall, I divided the shelf into 2 and filled it with chocolate chips and small lengths of strawberry laces (I was, as I had hoped, eventually inspired by Amy’s love for chocolate and my own leftover toppings).

For the nut stall, I divided the tray into 3 and chopped up one each of my Copycat Christmas Market Nuts: a pecan, an almond and a cashew, to put in each section.

Finally, for the cookie stall, I left the tray undivided and filled it with 5 of my mini gingerbread cookies (plus a couple of white chocolate chips for good measure).

Then, all that was left to do was to scatter a few snowflake sprinkles around the place and dust the whole thing with icing sugar snow!

Overall, this project was a MASSIVE undertaking, but I’m really proud of how well it turned out. Of course, there a bits that are messy, there are parts that I could have done better and I’m not sure the clothes that I was wearing will ever truly be clean again. BUT, it is a little bit of festive fun that I took from concept to completion and I think, all in all, it looks pretty good! I hope you like it, and I’d love to hear about any gingerbread projects you undertook this year!

Gemma

xxx

The dough in question comes from the December 2002 issue of BBC Good Food magazine, under the name ‘Finnish fairy-tale house’, and was shared by a woman called Mira Paren. Unlike traditional gingerbread, this dough is flavoured with cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and orange- no ginger in sight! But, trust me- it is truly delicious!

The recipe below makes enough to build a standard gingerbread house, which we have done for many years. I will, at some point, share the process of making a house using this dough. However, this year, I’m using this dough for a different gingerbread undertaking, which I’m VERY excited about. Stay tuned! You can also easily use this dough for individual biscuits- which I have also done many, many times. The number of biscuits it yields will, of course, vary depending on how big your cutters are. I have listed this recipe as making about 30 average-sized biscuits, but please consider this figure a rough estimate!

You can decorate these biscuits however you want- glacé icing, royal icing and melted chocolate, alongside an array of sweets and treats, all work well. If you use this for a house, you definitely want to use something that sets firm, such as royal icing or caramel. We only want structurally-sound gingerbread houses on this blog! These biscuits are perfect for making with kids (it’s true! I was the kid!)- easy to make, easy to decorate and very easy to enjoy afterwards.

Let me know if you try this recipe out and, if you do, I’d love to hear how you think it compares to traditional gingerbread! Like I said, keep an eye out later on this week for a post detailing my 2022 gingerbread undertaking- I think it’s going to be so much fun!

Gemma

xxx

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Christmas ‘Gingerbread’ (Finnish Spiced Biscuits)

A robust, spiced cookie that can be used as an alternative to traditional gingerbread for both individual biscuits and Christmas houses. Decorate using melted chocolate, glacé or royal icing, with small sweets and sprinkles.

Course Dessert, Snack

Cuisine Finnish

Keyword Biscuit, Christmas, Gingerbread, Gingerbread House, Spice

Prep Time 20 minutes minutes

Chill time 30 minutes minutes

Servings 30 biscuits

Ingredients

• 140 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 100 g golden caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 100 ml golden syrup
• 1 tsp ground cardamom seeds (can be obtained by grinding the seeds from 2tsp cardamom pods)
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp grated orange zest
• 450 g plain flour, sifted

Instructions

• In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and 50g of the sugar until pale and fluffy.
• In a separate bowl, whisk the egg with the remaining 50g sugar until pale and thick (the 'ribbon stage'). You should be able to draw a figure of eight with the batter as it falls from the whisk.
• Combine the bicarbonate of soda with the golden syrup, then pour into the butter mixture and mix well. Add the beaten egg mixture and mix again.
• Add the spices, orange zest and flour to the bowl and mix thoroughly, until a cohesive dough has formed. Form the dough into a ball, wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
• Once the dough has chilled, preheat the oven to 190°C and line 2 baking trays with baking paper. Remove the dough from the fridge and place it on a floured surface and roll it out to the thickness of a £1 coin. Cut out shapes using a cookie cutter, and place on a lined baking tray.
• Bake the cookies in the preheated oven for 6-8 minutes, depending on the size. Allow to cool fully before decorating.