Ninjabread Men

So today's post is another baking one, but this time a different spin on a traditional classic. My sister in law bought me these cutters for my birthday and I have been meaning to try them out for a while now.

These tough gingerbread men come complete with recipe, for which you will need the following:

• 350g plain flour
• 2 tsp of ground ginger
• 1 tsp of bicarbonate of soda
• 100g butter/olive spread
• 175g soft light brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 4 tbsp of golden syrup
• the recipe card that comes attached to the cutters

Grease/line a tray and pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees/gas mark 5.

Start by sifting all the dry ingredients into a large bowl.

I then deviated from the recipe slightly and melted the butter and golden syrup in the microwave before mixing in to the dry ingredients with a wooden spoon. Add the egg and form into a rough dough.

The dough needs to chill before rolling. 10 mins in the freezer did the job, or 30 mins in the fridge.

After 10 minutes, sift flour onto a clean work surface and roll out the chilled dough. It needs to be approx 0.5cm thick and even where possible.

It also helps to flour the rolling pin before you end up in a right sticky mess!

Use the three cutters to create a combination of ninja's and place these on your greased baking tray. I found using a knife under each one to put them on the try largely prevented loss of ninja limb.

Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden brown. As you can see I made slightly chubby ninjas but they have a lovely texture and are slightly chewy on the inside.

Mary Berry check out the crumb on these!!

 The recipe then suggests icing with writing icing or similar. The only suitable icing we had (on a sunday afternoon) was glitter icing so any 'tough' notions for these chubby ninjas is long gone.

They taste great however and the recipe is very straightforward.

So tough guy, fancy trying something different for your next gingerbread bake?