Bookish Recipe: Gingerbread Cookies

Welcome to Bookish Recipes, a feature on the blog where I cook or bake a recipe from a book I have loved and share the result with you. This week's recipe is inspired by the book The Art of Baking Blind by Sarah Vaughan. This book is all about baking and delicious food but also handles some really brave topics like eating disorders, miscarriages, troubled marriages and heartbreak, which make it a fantastic story to read.

Earlier this year, Sarah Vaughan stopped by to share her recipe for Gingerbread Families and tell us why this recipe was so special in the story. Have a look at her post here. So given than Christmas is around the corner, I decided to try my hand at her recipe!

Ingredients:

350g plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp ground ginger

115g butter, diced

175g Light Brown Soft Sugar

4 level tbsp Golden Syrup

1 medium egg, beaten

2 tbsp milk

Raisins for eyes

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/170Cfan/gas 5. Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ginger. Add the butter and rub in until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the light brown soft sugar.

2. In a small bowl beat together the golden syrup, egg and milk. Stir into the dry ingredients and mix to a dough, Turn out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth.

3. Roll the mixture out on a lightly floured surface to about 5mm thick and using a gingerbread cutter cut out 12 gingerbread men and carefully transfer to baking trays lined with parchment paper. I didn't have a cutter. So I simple cut some Christmassy shapes with a knife.

4. Decorate the biscuits with raisins for eyes. I don't like raisins so I decided to decorate my cookies with white chocolate. Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden. Allow to cool slightly and harden before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

5. They will store in an airtight container for up to a week but I doubt they’ll last that long! I can assure you, they won't here!

About the book:

Title: The Art of Baking Blind
Author: Sarah Vaughan
Published: August 13th 2015 by Hodder & Stoughton
Amazon | Amazon UK

Blurb: There are many reasons to bake: to feed; to create; to impress; to nourish; to define ourselves; and, sometimes, it has to be said, to perfect. But often we bake to fill a hunger that would be better filled by a simple gesture from a dear one. We bake to love and be loved.

In 1966, Kathleen Eaden, cookbook writer and wife of a supermarket magnate, published The Art of Baking, her guide to nurturing a family by creating the most exquisite pastries, biscuits and cakes. Now, five amateur bakers are competing to become the New Mrs. Eaden. There's Jenny, facing an empty nest now that her family has flown; Claire, who has sacrificed her dreams for her daughter; Mike, trying to parent his two kids after his wife's death; Vicki, who has dropped everything to be at home with her baby boy; and Karen, perfect Karen, who knows what it's like to have nothing and is determined her facade shouldn't slip.

As unlikely alliances are forged and secrets rise to the surface, making the choicest pastry seems the least of the contestants' problems. For they will learn--as as Mrs. Eaden did before them--that while perfection is possible in the kitchen, it's very much harder in life.

Read my Review of The Art of Baking Blind here!