Gingy: Ginger and honey cookies

(Angry Gingy says: Don´t eat me!)


When the holidays arrive and we realize the year is coming to an end, we start to think about what happend during this year and put things in a scale.
My year was very good, I can´t complain. It had its sad side, by the departure of a beloved, had its joys, challenges, hopes and celebrations. The scale leaned to a positive side.


Next year, I expect surprises, as always, generally the´ll be good, so I'm waiting. 
And so in a feeling of celebration, to get into the warmth of the holidays, I made spiced cookies  with a child motif, shaped Gingy the gingerbread man from the movie Shrek.



I will not justify myself and say I made it to give it to my two nephews, I made them for me! 
I confess that I´m a child that most of the time plays to a be a grown-up.


This recipe makes many, many cookies. A lot. About 80. Depends on the size. You can make half of the recipe, and instead of half egg, put an egg yolk.
The flavour is mild in terms of spices, the kids really liked them, I didn´t want to overwhelm them.
If you like, can double the amount of ginger and cinnamon.

 
(The Gingys about to be crushed by a rolling pin! Run!)


If you make big cookies, I recommend to leave them a little more in the oven, like a minute, because they can break when manipulating. The texture of these cookies is moist and fluffy. 


I don´t have a Gingy cutter, so I made the form in a paper, here´s a link. I had fun cutting Gingy, I cutted it with a knife, but if you have any man cookie cutter, use that. Or make any cookie shape you like.

 
(Gingys in potential)


I recommend a cold dough when you cut the cookies, it´s easier to lift them, but if the dough warms up, you won´t have problems either. Don´t knead the dough very much, so it won´t get hard. When you have pieces of dough, flatten and stack them by hand with a rolling pin and stretch. So the gluten that forms is minimum
While you´re cooking cookies, put the cuuted ones in the refrigerator.

 
(Not yet Gingys!)


Ginger and honey cookies
Ingredients
600 g flour
170 g common sugar
Sweet cocoa 30 g (3 tbsp)
Baking soda 3 / 4 tsp heaped
Salt 1 / 2 tsp
1 tablespoon cinnamon
Ground ginger 1 / 2 tsp
Ground black pepper 1 / 4 tsp
190 g butter
Egg 1 unit
2 tbsp honey
2 tablespoons milk


Procedure
- Mix in a bowl flour, sugar, spices, cocoa, baking soda and salt.
- Mix separately in another bowl, egg, honey and milk
- With the cold butter, add to the dry ingredients and mix with fingertips until butter disappears, leaving a sand.
- Add the liquids and mix until well blended
- Wrap the dough in fil paper and reserve in refrigerator for at least one hour
- Remove from the refrigerator, stretch the dough with a rolling pin on floured surface to a thickness of 5 mm for large cookies and 3 mm for the small cookies
- Preheat oven to 180°C
- Transfer the cookies to a greased and floured oven pan and put them in the oven
- Bake the cookies for 8 minutes, or when you see them the edge is browning
- Cool completely and carefully remove cookies
- Decorate with icing: lemon juice + powdered sugar to make a thick paste that does not spread, put in a piping bag with the smallest round tip. Colour the icing if desired.


 
(The Gingys)


The sweet cocoa is the one for the milkshade You can change for unsweetened cocoa, and cookies will be darker and chocolatly. The milk can be exchanged for orange juice and honey, if you do not like or not available, for corn syrup or glucose.

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PS: Gingy asks me to tell you that he wishes you lost of love and happiness.

Here I leave his photo: