I love gingerbread, it’s one of my guilty pleasures. Often when I pass the bakery on the way to picking my boy up from school, I’ll slip in and buy a couple of gingerbread men, women or penguins for us both as a little treat. I like my gingerbread spicy, so I’m always a little generous when I make my own, like with these spicy gingerbread mummies for Halloween.

This week we got a new set of kids baking equipment, so we were keen to test it out and I was keen to bake a batch of gingerbread people for Halloween. The recipe is a tired and tested one; I’m not sure where it came from, but it’s been used many times over the years and my butter and flour splattered recipe book can attest. Like I said, I like it extra spicy, so if you want a milder gingerbread, then maybe halve the quantity of the spices.

As Halloween is round the corner, we wanted to make Gingerbread Mummies. These are especially easy for kids and for not very confident decorators to do. You just drizzle the icing over to look like bandages. If I’d been more on it, I’d have bought a pack of sugar eyes which you can stick on to add to the spookiness.

This recipe makes a surprising number of gingerbread men. Admittedly I use a pretty small cutter, but I managed to make 40 of them. They didn’t last the weekend though, not with my greedy family. They keep well in a sealed tin or container, so don’t feel like you too have to eat them all within 48 hours.

Spicy Gingerbread Mummies

Ingredients
350g plain flour, plus extra for rolling out
1 level teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
2 fairly heaped teaspoons of ground ginger
2 fairly heaped teaspoons of allspice
125g baking margarine
175g caster sugar or soft brown sugar
1 large egg
4 tbsp golden syrup
To decorate
100g icing sugar
Warm water, a few drops at a time
Sugar eye decorations (optional)

Method
Using a large bowl, sift the plain flour, bicarb of soda, ginger and all spice and the pan mix together, I use a food processor as it saves getting overly sticky fingers and it’s quicker.

Tip in the margarine and mix until it looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar and then add a large egg and the golden syrup. This is where things get really sticky, mix thoroughly in the food mixer until it all comes together.

Wrap the dough in cling film, or pop in a clean plastic bag and refrigerate for half an hour or so. Once the dough is rested, it’s ready to roll!

At this point, I set up a bit of a gingerbread production line. I line two of my biggest baking trays with baking paper and pre-heat my oven to 180 degrees.
I divine the dough into four and on a floured surface, I roll out one of the pieces of dough. It needs to be about half a centimetre thick.

Carefully using your gingerbread cutter, cut out as many shapes as you can manage, roll out and cut again until you have filled your two trays. You need a bit of space around them, and I did trays of 8 figures, baking two trays at a time. In all I baked 5 trays, which is enough gingerbread mummies for a party!

Bake each tray for 12 minutes, maybe a minute it two more. They need to be lightly brown. Take them out of the oven and leave them to cool for 10 minutes or so. If you try to take them off the tray sooner, they will likely break. After 10 minutes, remove them from the baking paper and leave to cool fully on a wire rack.

Once they are cool, then you can decorate them. I sifted 100g of icing sugar into a bowl and gradually added drips and drops of water, mixing all the time. You need it to be thick but runny enough for it to drizzle off the spoon.

To decorate, I put my gingerbread mummies back on the baking paper I’d used (it saves you getting sticky icing everywhere) and using a teaspoon, I drizzled the icing across the mummies so it looks like bandages.

If I’d managed to get some sugar eyes, I would have stuck those on using some of my drizzly icing too. They looked pretty cool and my boy thought they were the perfect Halloween sweet treat.

If you enjoyed this, you might also like to try these recipes…

• Grasmere Style Gingerbread
• Pumpkin Cake with Cinnamon Frosting
• Honey Spiced Pumpkin Pie
• Decorating Spooky Cupcakes