CHRISTMAS TIPS: FAKE GINGERBREAD MEN

Hello to you all! Ready to welcome the New Year? We’ll spent the New Years’ Eve eating at a friend house, all together. Today I wanna share with you the last recipe of the year! I would have posted it before, for Christmas, but I hadn’t time enough. As you can see, I tried to prepare some kind of “gingerbread men” – only for the shape, after all. –

Basically, you must know that in Italy gingerbread isn’t so wide-spreaded like in America or other countries. For us, also the gingerbread men shape is something “imported”. We have a bunch of different type of cookies, but one of the most used dough for them is the so-called “pasta frolla”(shortcrust pastry).
This year I made the gingerbread men made by cocoa shortcrust pastry instead of gingerbread. I was in doubt for the result, but as you can see they are really pretty. I made decorations with white&red sugar paste, instead of using royal icing. Here the recipe:

INGREDIENTS: (10-12 cookies)

– Flour 00: 300 gr
– Cocoa powder: 30 gr
– Butter: 150 g
– Powdered sugar: 130 gr
– Eggs (yolk): 3

PREPARATION:

To make the shortcrust pastry, first of all sift the flour, the cocoa powder and the powdered sugar. Put all the ingredients in the mixer, together with the cold butter, chopped in cubes. Blend everything till you’ll obtain a sandy-like and floury mixture, then transfer it on a floury pastry board.
Make a well in the centre of the flour (in many blog i’ve read ” make a volcano with the flour” , or “make a whole in the center if the flour”: it’s the same, in Italy we say “fare una fontana”), then pour in the center the 3 egg yolks, and knead powerfully till you’ll have a compact and elastic dough.

Shape a block and wrap it into the plastic wrap, then put it in the fridge for 30 minutes before using it; pasta frolla is a simple preparation really good both for cookies and tarts. If you notice that the dough is a bit too dry, you could add a spoon of egg white, or better a spoon of milk/water.

Use the gingerbread man mold to shape the cookies and put them on a baking tray. Cook them for maximum 10 minutes at 180 °C. Let them cool down before starting the decoration. I used sugar paste to make the eyes and the mouths, and the remaining butter cream of the cupcakes to make some buttons. I gifted the cookies to my relatives wrapped in transparent pastry bags.

That’s all! I wish you a wonderful Happy New Year 2015! And Happy Fiesta Friday to my talented blog-friends!Cris

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