So many men, so little time.....

Makes: 25 Gingerbread Men (people as the pc brigade would say!)

Preparation time : 20 minutes
Cooking time : 10 minutes
Total time : 30 minutes


Ingredients

125g unsalted butter
100g dark muscovado sugar
4 tbsp golden syrup
325g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground ginger
Supercook Writing Icing (optional)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170°C, gas mark 3. Line baking trays with baking parchment. Melt the butter, sugar and syrup in a medium saucepan, stirring occasionally, then remove from the heat.
2. Sieve the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ginger into a bowl and stir the melted ingredients into the dry ingredients to make a stiff dough.
3. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and roll to a thickness of about 5mm. Dip biscuit cutters into flour before cutting the dough, or cut around templates, which you can find at waitrose.com/christmas. Place the shapes onto the lined baking trays and bake, in batches, for 9-10 minutes until light golden brown.
4. Remove from the oven. While still warm, and using a skewer or chopstick, make any holes that you will need to hang up the biscuits with ribbon or to make a yuletide garland. If you are decorating your Christmas cake with gingerbread people, make the holes in their arms so that ribbon can be threaded through at a later stage.
5. When completely cool, decorate with the icing. The gingerbread biscuits can be stored in an airtight container for up to two weeks (yeah right, they only last that long if they are lousy, and mine of course lasted just 24 hours!)