Blogtober Day 31: Happy Halloween 🎃 Easiest Ever Gingerbread Cookies & Free Printable 🎃

Happy Halloween Honeys 🎃

I hope you're having a wonderful weekend and a fabulous Halloween.💖  Can you believe we've reached the last day of Blogtober already?  This month has flown past and been such a lot of fun and it really has done what I wanted it to do.  Remind me how much fun blogging is.💖  

Speaking of fun, for the last post of this years Blogtober I thought I'd share the recipe (and a link to a downloadable printable version) for the easiest ever gingerbread cookie dough...  

How much fun are cookies to make? 😊  This is such an easy recipe to make and all you need are some cookie cutters in assorted shapes and lots of icing and tiny humans will love decorating them.💖  Let's get started then honeys...

Gingerbread cookies

Ingredients:

85g brown sugar
125g unsalted butter
1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
3 teaspoons of ground ginger
375g plain flour (sifted)
175 ml golden syrup

Directions:

1. Pre-heat your oven to 180C/356F/gas mark 4.

2. Into your mixer (or large mixing bowl) place your brown sugar and butter. Beat together until combined and creamy.

3. Once your sugar and butter are well mixed, add to the bowl (or your mixer which if, like me, you have painful, arthritic wrists is definitely the way to go) your plain flour (sifted), ginger, bicarbonate of soda and your golden syrup.  Mix until very well combined.

4. Turn out your gingerbread dough and place it into a tub or sandwich bag and into the fridge for 15-20 minutes, more if you can.  This lets your dough "rest" as the more it's handled the stickier it becomes. The more chilled it is, the easier it is to roll out and work with.

5. Once chilled, cut two pieces of greaseproof paper and place your dough between the greaseproof paper sheets and roll out.  The less you can manage to touch the dough the better, since the heat from your hands will make it "greasy."  Use your favourite cookie cutters and have fun cutting out your cookies.

6. Bake your cookies for 8-10 minutes until a lovely golden brown. Remove (carefully) from the oven and gently remove and place onto a wire cooling rack. I use a silicone spatula to do this as the cookies are still very fragile when first removed from the oven.

7. I like to sift a little icing sugar over the top of my cookies but they're still delicious without it :)

8. Sit down, put your feet up with a lovely cuppa and enjoy!

A tip honeys, do you prefer your cookies to be slightly "chewy" or thinner and crispier?  To achieve either, simply adjust the thickness of your cookie dough when you roll it out.  The thicker the cookie, the chewier it will be, whereas a thinner cookie will be crispier.🍪

There is a (hopefully) fun printable I made, quite some time ago now (I'm getting old lol) and this recipe is just as yummy all year round.😋   So, why not Christmas cookies? New Years cookies? Making-them-cause-it's-Tuesday cookies? 😊💖   If you'd like to download the printable, you can find it here. Enjoy honeys.💖    

This cookie dough really is easy to make and you can even plan ahead by making up two or three batches at a time.💖  These cookies really are so good that maybe you'll want to do this anyway 😋  Or, you could make up the cookie dough, bake a batch to enjoy and store any (unused) dough ready to bake as needed.   

To store extra cookie dough, roll it up tightly in cling film/plastic wrap and store in the fridge for 2-3 days or you can freeze the raw cookie dough for up to 3 months.  When you want to use it, remove from the freezer and place into the fridge to defrost overnight then roll out and bake as usual.

I hope you have the best Halloween dear ones, till next time, stay warm and safe everybody,hugs always xx