Soft Christmas gingerbread recipe. The best gift is Christmas gingerbread

Have a nice day, dear hostesses and cooks. And the days are really wonderful now - everything is filled with a holiday atmosphere. Everyone is in a hurry in search of gifts for their relatives, there are colorful showcases everywhere, there are no crowds in shops, and snow and ice figures are everywhere in the city and garlands are blinking.

Let's take a look at a do-it-yourself recipe for gingerbread with icing for Christmas together. They are very tasty, beautiful and aromatic.

To make it more convenient for you, every step of the preparation is illustrated with a photograph.

Ingredients:

1. Flour - 350 gr.

2. Butter - 100 gr.

3. Sugar - 90 gr.

4. Condensed milk - 1 tbsp.

5. Honey - 120 gr.

6. Spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cardamom, cloves, black pepper) - 2 tsp.

7. Baking powder - 1 tsp.

8. Egg white - 1 pc.

9. Powdered sugar - 200 gr.

10. Lemon juice - 0.5 tsp.

Cooking method:

1. Beat the softened butter until it turns white, like a cream. It will take 5-7 minutes.

2. Then, while continuing to beat, add 50 grams of sugar in three rounds. With each new portion of sugar, beat the butter for about 2-3 minutes.

3. Now turn off the mixer and add honey, the remaining sugar (40g), mixed with condensed milk and spices to the butter with sugar. As you have seen from the ingredients, the list of spices is quite large, and it is better to take them in the following proportion.

Take 0.5 tsp each cinnamon and ginger, 0.4 tsp cardamom, and the remaining spices in equal proportions, with a total volume of 0.6 tsp. It is important that all spices are very finely ground. I took a fresh ginger root, about 2 cm, and grated it on a fine grater.

4. Now all these components need to be moved with a mixer for a couple of minutes.

5. Sift flour and add baking powder to it, mix well and add to our mixture. Stir the ingredients with a spoon. You will get an oil-flour crumb.

6. Put it on the table and knead with your hands for about 10 minutes to make the dough smooth, homogeneous and elastic. There is no need to add flour at this stage.

7. Now you can start cutting. To do this, lightly dust the table and rolling pin with flour and roll out the dough 4-5 mm thick. Use cookie cutters to cut different shapes.

It is important not to overdo it with flour, otherwise the gingerbread will be too tough.

Let's start baking:

8. Place them on a baking sheet covered with baking paper or oiled and dusted with flour. If you want to later decorate the Christmas tree with these gingerbread cookies, then make holes in the blanks.

9. Heat the oven to 200 ° C and bake the gingerbread for 8-12 minutes, depending on their size and your oven. But do not leave anywhere, and constantly watch, it is necessary that they only turn red. Remove the finished gingerbread cookies from the oven and leave to cool.

10. In the meantime, prepare the frosting. Beat the cold egg white at high speed, when it has already turned into a fluffy foam, start adding the powdered sugar and lemon juice in portions.

11. Apply icing to the cooled gingerbread cookies using a pastry bag. Here your imagination can be limitless, if you tint some of the glaze with food colors, the pattern will be even more interesting.

You can also use a variety of confectionery sprinkles and beads. When all the gingerbread cookies are decorated, dry the frosting in a warm oven until it is firm. All is ready! Nice and festive! You can decorate your tree, or make sweet gifts for your friends, or just eat with tea.

Additional Information:

You can also make gingerbread "Kozuli" for the New Year. Their shape is very original, and is perfect for decorating a Christmas tree.

Alternatively, you can make a gingerbread house, only you have to tinker with it a little. Children will appreciate the new Christmas toy, which can also be eaten.

In this video, you will find how to properly prepare white ganache. Happy New Year everyone!

After the chimes in new year's eve the holiday does not end. A week later, the no less anticipated Christmas arrives. The table for the celebration has a wide variety of dishes, because this day is the end of the fast. One of the traditional ones is Christmas gingerbread, the recipe with a photo of which will be the key in this article.

Cooking time - 1 hour.

The number of servings is 15-20.

Christmas gingerbread - what is this delicacy?

Probably everyone who has watched American films at least once, which takes place during the winter holidays, has seen all kinds of cookies of various shapes decorate the tables there.

In addition, gingerbread houses decorated with sweets, powder and glaze can also be seen there. But not everyone knows that we also have a tradition of baking gingerbread. Almost every nation, especially Europeans, has its own traditions in baking these cookies. Someone makes Christmas gingerbread, recipes with photos of which can be found here, with spices and spices, someone - with various nuts. But the fact that this delicacy is a symbol of the holiday is a fact. Christmas gingerbread, a recipe with a photo of which will help you master them with ease, can become not only delicious delicacy, but also a decoration for your Christmas tree and an original gift.

Christmas gingerbread: recipe for cooking

There are several main varieties of this delicacy, each of which differs in individual characteristic components:

Christmas gingerbread - little secrets

To make the Christmas gingerbread recipe you have chosen really decorate your holiday, follow some tried and tested tips. For example, if you want to hang them on the tree as a decoration, before putting them in the oven, make holes in the raw dough with a juice and cocktail straw.

If you have baked Christmas gingerbread recipes that do not contain citrus notes, and you really want to feel its flavor, then this can be achieved. You only need ready-made biscuits place in a container and add the orange peel there and change it every day.

The New Year's gingerbread cookies, the photos of which you see, are decorated with glaze. It is very easy to prepare and apply. The ingredients for this mixture are:

• 1 egg white;
• 1 cup powdered sugar;
• 0.5 teaspoon lemon juice.

All ingredients must be intensively beat until airy and firm foam, one by one. First, beat one protein, pouring in the powder and pouring in the juice. In the event that you are not satisfied with the white frosting, add the color of the food coloring you want. You can paint and decorate the Christmas gingerbread as you like. Only after that you need to put them in a warm oven to dry them a little.

Your delicacy is ready, and since it lasts a long time, it will delight you for more than one day.

Video recipes

To get acquainted with the process of making Christmas gingerbread in all details, we recommend watching the video recipes:

Every December I bake Christmas gingerbread and every year I try to make them better and tastier. This year, my Christmas December started in November :) And along with that, I found the most perfect recipe for gingerbread!

Amazing nearby. When I was 5 years old, I was transported to a small Soviet town, which after 3 years suddenly became part of another country. So I happened to be in Estonia and lived here for 15 years. Already outside this cold country, I seriously became interested in baking and every December, in search of the perfect Christmas gingerbread, experimented with Austrian, German and various other recipes, until I accidentally tasted one Estonian gingerbread and realized - this is it! Soft, porous dough, slightly airy, but at the same time quite dense, spicy and aromatic - in a word, ideal. Everything returns to normal.

This recipe is designed specifically for Christmas gingerbread, not cookies. But it can be easily turned from a recipe for gingerbread with a filling (like Tula and Pokrovsk gingerbread, but even tastier) into a recipe for Christmas cookies and even a recipe for blanks gingerbread house... I'll tell you step by step how to do it.

Christmas gingerbread

For the test:
100 gr butter
50 grams of sugar
60 grams of molasses (can be replaced, details below)
120 gr honey
2 tsp spices (about spices in more detail below)
350 gr flour
1 tsp baking powder

If you want to limit yourself to gingerbread cookies (that is, without filling), then you can stop there. The rest of the steps are directly for the gingerbread.

For impregnation:
- 50 grams of sugar
- 50 ml of water
- 1 tbsp. liquor (you can not add)

For the layer:
- 100 gr jam / boiled condensed milk

For glaze:
- 100 grams of sugar
- 30 ml of water

First, let's prepare the dough, in any case it is prepared in the same way, both for cookies and for gingerbread. Beat the butter at the maximum speed of the mixer until it turns white. This will take approximately 7-10 minutes. Without turning off the mixer, we will begin to add sugar to the butter in parts and continue to beat - add a third of the sugar, beat for a couple of minutes, another third ... and so on.

Now the mixer can be turned off and you can safely add molasses, honey and spices there. At home, I replace molasses with soft Muscovado cane sugar - you need exactly soft, that is, so that it crumbles in a pack, and does not crumble, and is a little wet. Such sugar is a great substitute for molasses! Here in Estonia it is also replaced with brown sugar syrup - it smells like burnt sugar syrup, viscous and thick, but I have never seen such a thing in Russia. As a last resort, if there is neither molasses nor sugar syrup, no Muscovado sugar, then you can mix ordinary sugar with condensed milk - we need a viscous consistency.

Now about the spices. In Estonia, they sell special Christmas spices for gingerbread dough already in a ready-made mixture. But personally, I only use them in the confectionery shop, and at home, for example, I have all these spices separately, and in large quantities and of very good quality (cardamom and cinnamon from Jordan, nutmeg from Greece, etc.), so I just mixed them and made the mixture myself. Here are the spices that must be included:
- cinnamon
- ginger
- cardamom
- nutmeg
- black pepper
- Carnation
All spices must be ground into powder. Mix them up and you're done! You can do a lot and store in a separate bag - this mixture will be needed throughout December.

By the way, almonds are fried in these spices on the streets of Tallinn every winter, that's what I mean.

Now sift the flour and add baking powder to it. Then add the flour to the oil mixture and mix thoroughly with a spoon. Stir it up? Now literally for 5 seconds in the mixer, so that the dough is held together. But it is important not to over-beat! Literally whack-whack, and you'll see the dough come out. It will be crumbly, not a single mass - this is what we need.

And then we do what we want with this test. For a large gingerbread, I laid out all the dough in a round shape 25 cm in diameter and baked in the oven for 25 minutes at a temperature of 170 degrees. If you want cookies or blanks for a gingerbread house, then carefully knead the dough with your hands, knead it for 10 minutes so that it becomes elastic and gently roll it out with a rolling pin, constantly sprinkling the table and dusting the rolling pin with flour - it is important here that the dough does not crumble or stick , but at the same time, white flour should not remain on the finished products, otherwise it will be visible after baking. Excess flour can be shaken off with a brush before sending to the oven.

Bake small gingerbreads for 7-12 minutes (depending on the oven) - make sure that they do not become too ruddy, they should only slightly take and rise a little, then inside they will remain soft and porous and will not dry out during storage.

Small figures can be decorated with a multi-colored squirrel or chocolate icing.

If you decide to make a gingerbread with a filling (oh, do it by all means! You will not regret it!), Then you still need to prepare the syrup for impregnation, soak it, spread the filling and then glaze it.

The syrup is prepared in an elementary way - mix sugar with equal amount water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Cool and add your favorite liqueur (you can skip it if we are doing it for children). Cut the large round gingerbread horizontally into two parts. We saturate the top (!) Lid of the gingerbread with syrup, because the bottom will absorb part of the filling (especially if it is jam). On the bottom, respectively, evenly distribute the jam or boiled condensed milk- what do you love more. I did with homogeneous apple jam, very tasty! Cover with the soaked top of the gingerbread, press down and go to prepare the icing.

With the glaze, everything is also elementary - we take a lot of sugar and a little water (I indicated the proportions at the very beginning), bring to a boil, stirring constantly, so that the sugar is completely dissolved. It is not necessary to cool this mixture, otherwise it will thicken. We take a brush, dip it in the glaze and start with active movements back and forth, as if you are a bad painter and in a very hurry somewhere, to smear it on the surface of the gingerbread. Directly very energetic! So that the hand gets tired in a minute. Add more glaze and smear more. Thus, it is distributed over the entire surface and, when it begins to harden, it will turn white, as is usually the case with gingerbread.

This may sound complicated from my description, but the steps are actually quite simple. Try with ordinary gingerbread without filling, and then with filling it will seem easier than light!

Preparation for Christmas in different families is different, but one ritual remains the same for everyone - the preparation of a festive treat. In each country, it is customary to serve their own at the Christmas table. Sweets take a special place.

For Christmas, baked goods are prepared - cookies, gingerbread, puddings, strudels and muffins. Let's take a look at the most popular types of Christmas sweets.

Christmas cookies and gingerbread

Christmas gingerbread refers to gingerbread cookies, but they are also called Christmas cookies. Similar baked goods can be found in almost every home during Christmas. It is decorated with bright painting, caramel, melted chocolate and icing. Therefore, making sweets often turns into a creative activity, to which you can attract all family members and make the holiday even more fun.

Gingerbread can be made in the form of Christmas trees, hearts, stars and rings, and the gingerbread man is popular in Europe. Figures are not only served on the table, but also decorate the spruce or the interior of the apartment.

Classic Christmas gingerbread

An essential ingredient in classic Christmas gingerbread is ginger. In addition to it, they include honey and spices. For cooking, you can use any of the recipes.

Recipe number 1

• 600 gr. wheat flour;
• 500 gr. rye flour;
• 500 gr. natural honey;
• 250 g butter;
• 350 gr. granulated sugar;
• 3 eggs;
• 1 tsp soda;
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/3 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 tsp each ginger, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg,
• a little vanillin.

Cook sugar syrup by adding half a glass of water to it. Combine the butter with honey and melt in the microwave - this can be done in a water bath. Add salt, baking soda and spices to the sifted flour. Pour in the syrup and honey-oil mixture. Stir and wait for the mixture to cool, then add milk and eggs and knead. Put it in a plastic bag or wrap it in plastic wrap and send it to the refrigerator for a day. Roll out the gingerbread dough, cut the figures out of it and place in the oven heated to 180 °. Bake for 15 minutes.

Recipe number 2 - Simple gingerbread

• 600 gr. flour;
• 120 g butter;
• 120 g brown or regular sugar;
• 100 ml of honey;
• 2/3 tsp soda;
• 1 tbsp without a slide of ground ginger;
• 1 tbsp cocoa.

Whisk the softened butter with sugar. To get a fluffy mass, put honey on it and beat again. Mix dry ingredients, add oil mixture and knead. Soak the dough for 20 minutes in the refrigerator, then roll out to 3 mm and cut out the figures. Bake Christmas gingerbread in the oven at 190 ° C for 10 minutes.

Recipe number 3 - Fragrant gingerbread

• 250 g Sahara;
• 600 gr. flour;
• egg;
• 250 g honey;
• 150 g oils;
• 25 gr. cocoa;
• 1 tsp baking powder;
• 3 tbsp rum;
• a pinch of cloves, cardamom, vanilla and anise;
• 1 tsp each cinnamon and ginger;
• zest of 1/2 lemon and orange.

Combine honey with butter and sugar. Microwave the mixture and set aside to cool slightly. Separate half of the flour and add all dry ingredients and zest to it. Put the eggs in the butter mixture, stir and pour the rum, then add it to the spice flour and knead. Gradually add the second part of the flour to the mass. You should get tight, elastic dough... Wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 8-10 hours. Roll out the dough to 3 mm, cut out the figures and place in the oven for 10 minutes.

Christmas Almond Cookie Recipe

• 250 g flour;
• 200 gr. ground almonds;
• 200 gr. Sahara;
• lemon zest;
• 1 tsp baking powder;
• 4 eggs.

Whisk the sugar and eggs, in a separate container, combine all the other ingredients, and then combine the two mixtures. Knead tough dough, roll out and squeeze out with molds, or cut out figurines. Place the dough in a 180 ° oven and bake for 10 minutes.

The dough for the gingerbread house is prepared in the same way as for the Christmas gingerbread. Ready dough it is necessary to roll out to 3 mm, attach a prepared paper stencil to it, for example, this:

To make this wonderful cupcake, you will need ingredients for different ingredients.

For the test:

• 250 ml of milk;
• 500 gr. flour;
• 14 gr. dry yeast;
• 100 g Sahara;
• 225 gr. butter;
• 1/4 spoon each of cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg and ginger;
• a pinch of salt;
• zest of one lemon and an orange.

For filling:

• 100 g almonds;
• 250 g raisins;
• 80 ml rum;
• 75 gr. candied fruits and dried cranberries.

For powder:

• powdered sugar - the more it is, the better;
• 50 gr. butter.

Mix the filling ingredients and let sit for 6 hours. Stir the mixture periodically during this time.

Heat milk and butter until room temperature... Place the dough ingredients in a large bowl. Mix and knead. Cover the dough with a clean cloth or towel and leave to rise - this may take 1-2 hours. The dough comes out greasy and heavy, so it may not rise for a long time, but you have to wait for that.

When the dough is right, add the filling and knead again. Divide the mass into 2 equal parts, roll each to 1 cm in the shape of an oval, then fold as shown in the diagram:

Lubricate vegetable oil baking sheet, put the adit on it and leave for 40 minutes - it should rise a little. Place the cake in an oven preheated to 170-180 ° and leave it there for an hour. Remove the baked goods, check them for doneness with a match, let them rest for 5 minutes. Grease the surface of the adit liberally with melted butter and sprinkle it heavily with powdered sugar. After cooling, wrap the dish in parchment or foil and place in a dry place.

You can store a German Christmas cake for several months; before serving it, it is advisable to keep it for at least 1-2 weeks, and preferably a month. This is necessary for the dish to be saturated with taste and aroma. But if there is no time, you can serve it fresh, this will not affect the taste very much, or prepare a dish for a friend in the adit format - quick cupcake with dried fruits and.

04.01.2017

The custom of giving each other gingerbread cookies dates back to the 13th century in southeastern Germany. Then the dessert was called lebkuchen, made from honey dough with almonds and cinnamon and richly decorated with sweet glaze. Gingerbread baking in those days was considered one of the most prestigious crafts, bakers came up with their own original recipes and sought to keep them secret from competitors.

In Russia, gingerbread appeared only in the 18th century. They differed from traditional German lebkuchens in size and shape, but the composition of the dough was almost identical. They were not, as in Europe, an attribute of Christmas - they were baked for many holidays, for weddings and name days, as well as for Easter.

And only recently the tradition of baking special gingerbread cookies for Christmas began to become popular in Russia. In our article we will share with you the most simple recipes making them at home

Traditional German gingerbread

Nuremberg lebkuchens

Ingredients:

• eggs - 3 pcs;
• cream - 250g;
• flour - 250g;
• sugar - 125g;
• honey - 50g;
• ground almonds - 125g;
• chopped almonds - 125g;
• candied lemon- 125g;
• ground spices: nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves - to taste;
• a few drops of rum and lemon essence.

Let's start by making the cakes. To do this, beat with a mixer a mixture of one egg, a spoonful of sugar, a pinch of salt and cream, gradually adding sifted flour to it. When we have a homogeneous mass, roll it into a thick sausage with a diameter of about 6 cm and cut into round pieces. We spread them on a baking sheet, having previously spread baking paper, and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes at a temperature of 160 degrees. Cool the resulting cakes for several hours, you can leave them overnight.

Beat the remaining eggs and 125 grams of sugar with a mixer along with ground and chopped almonds, candied fruits, spices and essences. You should get a thick, aromatic mass of creamy consistency. We put it on cooled flat cakes and put the baking sheet in the oven again for about 20 minutes, setting the temperature to 180 degrees.

Almond lebkuchens from Nuremberg

Classic gingerbread

Ingredients:

• honey - 70g;
• cinnamon - 1 tsp;
• cloves - 1 h / l;
• cocoa powder - 1 h / l;
• salt - 1 tsp;
• soda - 1 h / l;
• ground ginger - 1 pinch;
• butter - 125g;
• eggs - 2 pcs;
• sugar - 250g;
• flour - 750g.

In a small saucepan, mix honey, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, cocoa powder and salt, put it on fire and bring the resulting mixture to a boil, stirring constantly. Then remove the pan from the stove, immediately add butter to it, mix again and leave to cool.

Take a mixer and beat eggs with sugar. Add the cooled honey mass, then soda and sifted flour. Knead the dough until you get it homogeneous mass, and then we send it to the refrigerator for a day.

The next day we take out the dough and roll it out to a thickness of 3-5 mm, and then use special baking tins to make small figures out of it. Cover the baking sheet with baking paper and carefully, using a special metal spatula, transfer our gingerbread cookies to it. They should be baked for 7-10 minutes at 180 degrees.

Christmas gingerbread

Gingerbread recipe from Julia Vysotskaya

Ingredients:

• flour - 250g;
• cane sugar - 100g;
• butter - 100g;
• cream 10% fat - 100g;
• maple syrup - 50 ml;
• ginger root - 10g;
• dry ginger - 0.5 h / l;
• egg - 1pc;
• baking powder - 1 h / l;
• cinnamon - 1 tsp;
• carnation stars - 3 pcs.

Grind cinnamon and cloves into powder and mix with dry ginger, rub the washed and peeled ginger root on a grater. Then put the cream, maple syrup, ginger and spices in a small saucepan, put it on the fire and bring to a boil, stirring constantly.

While the spicy cream with maple syrup is cooling, beat the butter, egg and sugar with a mixer. In the resulting mass, without ceasing to beat, gradually add flour and baking powder, and then pour in the creamy mixture. After obtaining a homogeneous mass, put the resulting dough in the refrigerator for a day.

The next day, as in the previous recipe, roll out the dough, make small figures and put the gingerbread cookies in the oven for 15 minutes at a temperature of 180-200 degrees.

How to make icing sugar

Christmas gingerbread is traditionally decorated with patterns of multicolored sugar glaze... To prepare it, we need to beat the egg white with a few drops of lemon juice, gradually adding a glass of sifted powdered sugar to it and - if desired - food coloring... Pour the resulting mixture into a confectionery syringe, with which we further paint our gingerbread cookies.

Gingerbread cookies in colorful glaze