As I make these gingerbread cookies in my kitchen, music playing in the background, cat sleeping on a chair next to me, Duncan working away at the computer, my mind travels to my childhood. When my brother and I were little, my parents had a brilliant idea of keeping us both quiet and too busy to fight. All it took was a box of plasticine and an MDF board each (times were tough in communist Poland 😉 ). Suddenly fighting subsided as we both got busy building rival plasticine cities, complete with trees, passers-by, city squares, joined by a single bridge, which we would theatrically rip out whenever we fell out over something again. It may sound odd but you end up quite clued up on city planning when both your parents are architects 🙂 .
I’ve always been a bit of a nerd child (can you believe it? Moi?) who loved details and making intricate things with my hands so it was a perfect occupation for me. Decorating these cookies reminded me of spending hours obsessing over the shape of my plasticine trees 😉 . And if you were thinking ‘did she get her 2 year old neighbour to decorate these?’, you’re entirely forgiven as I am the first one to admit that my icing skills do need a bit of work. The thing is that being fairly health conscious, I am not a big fan of sugar icing so I never get a chance to practise. The icing does make these cookies though so I decided not to be that uptight about a bit of extra sugar.
1-2 cups icing sugar matcha powder, for green colour (optional) beetroot juice, for pink colour (optional) very finely chopped pistachios (optional)
*GLUTEN-FREE VERSION: use 330 g / 2 ½ + 1/8 cup GF flour mix and ¾ teaspoon of xanthan gum (unless the mix contains xanthan gum already). *FREEZING: This dough freezes very well. You can make it in advance, divide into 4 portions (so that it thaws quicker) and freeze wrapped up in cling film. Defrost a few hours before you are ready to start baking.
