The Gingerbread Men

This one is a quick one, and a bit of a cheat (but not really). My lovely manager at my last job got me a Gingerbread Man making kit for my 'secret' Santa, and making Gingerbread Men suddenly seemed a congruous indoor activity to the outdoor making of snowmen. Does that sentence make any sense?? The snow's gone to my head via my ears.

So anyhoo, here are my little lot.

I wish I'd had some different colours of icing, and maybe some brightly coloured, mini Smarties rather than these 'natural' 'normous ones. Yes, several of them have too many buttons, but this was the best way to cram chocolate bits on top.

Inside the cute box, in the image of a Gingerbread Man, was a packet of dry ingredients (flour, dried egg, bicarb, ground ginger...something else I can't remember), a sachet of golden syrup, a tube of black icing and those slightly odd non-Smarties.

All I had to do was tip out the dry ingredients, rub in 30g of butter 'til it resembled breadcrumbs, squeeze in the syrup, add 2tsps of cold water, squidge together, roll out, and voila: Gingerbread men!

Although this gave satisfying results in the form of baked goods, this didn't feel quite like baking for me - I quite enjoy all the measuring out and a certain amount of judging and concocting. But it was therapeutic nonetheless.

Regrettably, after my Menu For A Snowy Day, I couldn't possibly have fit a Gingerbread Man in my gob for dessert, so I'm going to munch one for breakfast and let you know how it tastes....

Report: hmm, quite tasty actually. Maybe could be a tiny bit more gingery, and perhaps have a little more chew. But it's not a bad biscuit!