Irish Style Gingerbread Men: Every Old Bakery's Favourite

Looking to beat the January blues? Have a jolly little gingerbread man, made with what is to become my go-to recipe!

The gingerbread man of my childhood... a biscuit soft enough to yield easily to a single bite, with a delicious bendy chewiness and a clean, pure flavour of golden syrup and ground ginger, all topped off with naff-as-hell cooking chocolate and sweets to decorate. This style of gingerbread man is ubiquitous in Ireland, appearing in every bakery around the country from small towns to cities. It's like they all have a recipe that was taught to them in culinary college, but in all the nearly 7 years I've been blogging, I've never quite captured it.

Over the course of my blog, I have done a few different recipes for gingerbread:

• Right back at the very start I had my recipe free from dairy, gluten, and egg which I made for my friend who was intolerant to all of the above;
• I had my Dinosaur Kimberley recipe, which was essentially a regular roll out biscuit dough with some spice and golden syrup for flavour;
• I then did an egg-free gingerbread recipe, which was essentially ginger flavoured shortbread;
• After that, there was the gingerbread skeletons recipe which was my first attempt at the kind of chewy bakery style gingerbread that I love, but wasn't quite there yet;
• And most recently my Gingerbread Village Cake, which featured a cakier style that's suitable for building houses but still nice to eat.

As you can see, I've never really had a go to recipe. Mostly because all the recipes I used didn't produce a gingerbread that I really liked; they were either to dry and crunchy, too sturdy and shortbready, too cakey, or too soft and squishy. None of the recipes I've used have that X-factor that I wanted.

(Credit: the Daily Express)

Until now! From my trawling of the internet, I found a recipe that is pretty much bang on that delicious flavour of my childhood (and adulthood, admittedly: I cannot resist the charms of a pretty little gingerbread man when I pass my local bakery). Shared to the RTÉ website is a recipe for Nanny Nellie's gingerbread men, and whoever Nanny Nellie is she most likely got that secret recipe because it makes a gingerbread man almost identical to any you'd find in a bakery.

INGREDIMENTS

Makes 24 gingerbread men

12 ounces (340 grammes) plain white flour: spelt, wheat, or gluten-free

1 to 2 tablespoons (15 to 30 millilitres) ground ginger, depending on how spicy you want it

1 teaspoon (5 millilitres) bicarbonate of soda

4 ounces (115 grammes) salted butter, or margarine for an authentic experience

6 ounces (170 grammes) soft light brown sugar

3 ounces (85 grammes) golden syrup

1 medium egg

Up to 1 tablespoon (15 millilitres) water, to adjust

Optional: other ground spices to taste, for example cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, etc.

To decorate

1 bar (150 grammes) milk cooking chocolate

Sweets such as Smarties, M&Ms, or Jelly Tots

METHOD

• Preheat the oven to 180C (350F) and line one or two baking sheets with non-stick paper.
• Sieve the dry ingredients together onto a sheet of non-stick paper, or into a roomy mixing bowl. Set aside.
• In a mixing bowl, beat together the butter, sugar and syrup with an electric mixer until well combined. Beat in the egg.
• Add the dry ingredients bit by bit until the mixer can no longer mix, then turn the mixture out onto a lightly floured work surface and bring the dough together by hand.
• Depending on your egg, you might need to add a little water to help the dough come together, which is perfectly normal. The dough should be soft, but not at all sticky.
• This dough can be used immediately and doesn't need chilling: roll out to a thickness of an eighth inch (3 millilmetres) on a well floured surface, making sure to move it around every so often to prevent sticking.
• Cut out shapes and arrange them about an inch (2.5 centimetres) apart on the tray(s). The scraps re-roll very well.
• Bake in the preheated oven for 7 to 9 minutes, or until they look set. They will still be a little soft, but the edges will be set nicely. Don't let them brown too much!
• Allow to cool on the trays momentarily before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
• To decorate, melt the chocolate according to the instructions. Dip the gingerbread man heads and feet in the chocolate, and attach the sweets with chocolate to look like buttons. Draw smiley faces on with melted chocolate using a cocktail stick.

Adapted from: https://www.rte.ie/lifestyle/recipes/2018/1107/1009352-nanny-nellies-gingerbread-men-today/

Chewy Caramel

I promised in my post about the homemade chocolate box that I'd give you all the recipe for chewy caramels, and here she is!

(Sorry for crap picture: did it in a hurry)

These are a little trickier than the fudge and coconut ice recipes that I've uploaded as it's a little more fiddly. However, it's not very complicated: it just needs to have an eye kept on it a lot of the time. This recipe I arrived at via many a ruined batch so you don't have to!

The chewiness of these caramels can be altered by what temperature you let the final mixture cook to (if you aren't familiar with cooking sugar and the different sugar boiling stages, check out the Exploratorium's explanation of sugar cooking):

• 115 to 118°C (240 to 245°F) for soft caramels
• 119 to 124°C (245 to 255°F) for firm caramels (which is the temperature used for the pictured caramels)
• 125 to 130°C (255 to 265°F) for quite hard caramels
• 131 to 135°C (265 to 275°F) for tooth-breaking caramels that need an angle grinder to eat 

Keep this in mind for when you're making them and choose which kind of caramel you want before cooking: it's impossible to uncook the mixture if you go too far.

INGREDIMENTS

This is a large quantity that will make about 1¼ pounds (570 grammes) of caramels, but I've found it can be easily halved or even quartered. Just be really careful when making small batches because it can burn or crystallise easily.

• 4 fluid ounces (115 millilitres) cream
• 4 fluid ounces (115 millilitres) milk
• 2 ounces (55 grammes) butter
• 14 ounces (400 grammes) caster sugar
• 2 ounces (55 grammes) dark brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 fluid ounces (60 milliltres) water

HOW-TO

• Prepare an 8 inch (20 centimeter) square tin by either greasing it lightly or lining it with non-stick baking paper. You could also use a silicone baking tin, which needs no greasing or lining.
• Put the cream, milk and butter into a jug and heat gently in the microwave until the butter melts; set aside.
• Heat the water in a heavy based saucepan on medium-low heat until steaming and then pour the sugar into a pile in the middle of the pan. Using gentle circular motions, stir the sugar into the water without touching the sides of the pan. This prevents the syrup from crystallising later.
• Keeping the syrup on a gentle heat, mix until the sugar has dissolved into the water and you are left with a transparent brown solution. Using a wet pastry brush to wash away any sugar crystals that have formed on the sides of the pan.
• Once all trace of any grittiness and crystaliness is gone, turn the heat up to medium-high. Allow the mixture to boil and once boiling clip a sugar thermometer onto the pan and don't stir. As tempting as it may be, just don't do it.
• Cook the mixture to 150°C (300°F). This isn't the temperature that defines the softness/hardness of your caramels, that comes later. However, cooking the syrup to this stage is important for the caramels to set.
• Take off the heat once the temperature is reached and pour in the warm cream and milk mixture. It will bubble up violently and release a lot of steam so take care! Gently stir in the cream mixture and return to the heat.
• Continue to cook without stirring to your desired temperature.
• Fill your sink or wash basin with about 2 inches (5 centimetres) of cold water. This seems batty, but all will be made clear.
• Once the temperature has been reached, take your pan off the heat and dip the bottom in the water to stop cooking immediately. Pour the caramel into your prepared tin without scraping the sides. This is vitally important to prevent your caramels from going all grainy and horrible. Some caramel will be regretably wasted in the process, but you can eat that out of the pan later with a spoon.
• Pour into your prepared tin and allow to cool at room temperature overnight.

Do not even think of setting it in the fridge: you can store it in the fridge once set, but setting the fudge in the fridge will cause crystallisation. Store in an air tight container to avoid it catching any unwanted odours or flavours.