These take a little time, but boy are they worth it. Unless you have a family like ours and the first batch disappears within hours of cooking anything special!
Recipe Origins
This recipe was developed by Ella Rossanis, the 2022 The Great Australian Bake Off winner, and shared via the ABC. You can find the full version by Clicking Here. Below is a briefer version, using our food processor, and the egg - which was in the ingredients list but missed out on a role in the method - oops!
Allow 3-4 hours to make these (2 hours chill time)
We made 12 small Gingerbread men from one batch but larger ones would be easier to fill with the choc nut butter for a more chocolatey flavour.
Ingredients
200g plain four
60g icing sugar
Pinch of Salt
1-2 teaspoons of ground ginger (to taste)
1 teaspoon ground Cinammon
1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves
110g unsalted butter
1 large egg, beaten
15ml ice cold water (we used Tasmanian tank water - it was cold enough!)
1 large tablespoon of Hazelbrae Chocoloate Nutter Butter
Method
1. Pop all the dry ingredients into the food processor (we were able to fit a double batch in ours). Give it a couple of pulses to mix the spices into the flour.
2. Chop or slice the butter into small pieces, add to flour mix and pulse until crumbly (you can also do this the traditional way and rub into flour with finger tips).
3. Combine egg and Water, and add to mix, pulsing again until just combined. Note: Our dough still had small lumps of butter as you can see from the rolled dough - but still came out perfectly crispy.
4. Tip on to floured bench, and gently mould into a smooth ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and flatten into a disk. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
5. Remove from fridge and roll as soon as it is soft enough to manage. Roll between two sheets of baking paper to 3mm thick and cut shapes with your cookie cutter. Work quickly as we found the dough quite sticky at this stage (on a hot day)
6. Place half the Men on a lined tray, use a straw to press/cut two button holes in the other half (to allow steam to escape while cooking).
7. Warm Choc nut butter in the microwave for 15 seconds to make it easy to spread - should be quite runny. We used about 1/3 teaspoon on our 12 small Men to spread over the figures - make sure to leave an edge for pressing the two sides together.
8. Lay the holey Man over the top of the choc nut man and press all the edges together well to seal him up.
9. Refrigerate for another hour
10. Bake in a 180C oven for approximately 15 mins (monitor from 10mins - we used our farms commercial oven and overcooked our first batch). You're looking for golden cookies but also cooked in the middle.
11. Allow to cool, then decorate!
