Recipe: Make your own festive Fitzbillies gingerbread

Christmas at Fitzbillies, Cambridge’s 104-year-old bakery, means gingerbread. Here’s how to make Fitzbillies’ gingerbread people at home

“We always make gingerbread at Christmas: gingerbread people so as to delight children and beautifully decorated gingerbread for Christmas tree decorations, with a hole to thread a ribbon and hang on the tree,” say the team. “They tend not to survive on the tree for long in houses where there are children (or dogs). How many you make will depend on the size of your cutters.”

Ingredients:

170g caster sugar

100g unsalted butter, softened

70g baking margarine, softened

200g golden syrup

400g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

1 tbsp bicarbonate of soda

1½ tbsp ground ginger

½ tsp mixed spice

250g or about ½ pack royal icing sugar (one that already includes powdered egg white, so that all you have to do is add water)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan) and line as many baking trays as you happen to have with baking parchment.

Cream the caster sugar, butter and margarine together in a bowl until just combined and then beat in the golden syrup.

In another bowl, combine the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and mixed spice, then stir into the creamed mixture to form a dough. Don’t overmix, otherwise the biscuits will be tough.

Wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill for 1 hour in the fridge.

Remove from the fridge and roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to a thickness of 6mm.

Cut out gingerbread people, houses, stars or any shape of your choice. If you would like to use them as Christmas tree decorations, use the end of a drinking straw to cut a small hole, not too close to the edge, so that you can thread a ribbon through.

Place on the lined baking trays and bake in the oven for 25–30 minutes. The biscuits will rise up and then collapse – at this stage they should be ready.

Remove from oven, leave them on the tray for a few minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack.

Once the biscuits are completely cool, you are ready to decorate. Make up the royal icing sugar according to the packet instructions. You will need an electric mixer or whisk for this.

Fit a piping bag with a No. 2 straight writing nozzle and fill it with icing – don’t over fill it or it will all squirt out the back onto your hands. (Or use a plastic freezer bag with the corner cut off.)

Pipe a mouth, nose, eyes and buttons onto your gingerbread people and any design of your choice onto your other shapes. Leave to set for a few moments before nibbling.

Fitzbillies is at Trumpington Street, King’s Parade and Bridge Street, Cambridge, and at fitzbillies.com