Monday 30 November 2015

Gingerbread Men

My mum made some gingerbread men the other day, they were lovely. So I thought I would give the recipe a go and share my thoughts with you all. I love making gingerbread as they not only taste amazing, but they make the entire house smell like christmas!

Ingredients
125 grams butter
150 grams plain flour
1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons of ground ginger
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 egg
4 tablespoons of golden syrup
175 grams of soft brown sugar

Method
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
Sift together all the dry ingredients apart from the sugar, proceed to add the sugar and butter then blend until crumbed. You can use hands to do this, continue until it looks like breadcrumbs. Then stir in the sugar.
Beat the egg and golden syrup together in a separate bowl then add to the current mixture until all the mixture clumps together. Remove the mixture from the bowl onto a flat surface, knead for a short amount of time. Then wrap the dough in clingfilm or place into food bag, then pop it in the fridge for about 15 - 20 minutes.
Remove from fridge, place on a floured surface and roll to desired thickness, the thiner the better as will rise slightly. Begin to cut out with desired cutter and place onto a baking tray (covered in baking paper)ensure you leave gaps in between your gingerbread as the do spread slightly during baking. 
Place into your preheated oven for around 8-12 minutes, just keep checking on them because they cooked in about 9 minutes in my oven. 
When cooked place on to wire cooling rack to cool completely then ice or serve as desired.

Jade
x



Sunday 8 November 2015

Explaination

Sooo on the fifth of October I flew to the USA to embark on what I thought was the biggest adventure of my life so far. I had a great first week in New York with all the girls who truly made it. I then arrived in New Jersey on Friday the ninth, for the first couple of days it was amazing. Then I began to realise that it wasn't what I signed up for. Im not going to go into too much detail about what happened because I don't think it is necessary. But I flew home (to England) on the eighteenth of october. I just wanted to write to ensure that I kept you In the loop also so you all knew what country I was in. I spent a week with my family in New Jersey, I spent a lot of time with Alana (my only friend) but I had a blast we didn't get to do all we wanted but we spent time drinking hot chocolate, watching movies and eating food. Basically Im back home in England, I have been here for a few weeks and I'm getting back into the swing of things. I was going to write this post earlier but to be honest I didn't feel ready, the whole thing was very emotional and I'm just getting used  to everything.
 I have no regrets.

Jade
x