Welcome November! I love the colder months, they’re a great excuse to stay in and bake! I’m sure you know that my favourite recipe all year round in gingerbread but they really are the perfect winter treat. Baking wit the family is always fun so I’m going to share our favourite gingerbread recipe and show you our gingerbread house cookies.

Ingredients to make gingerbread cookies

140g golden syrup
200g soft light brown sugar
200g unsalted butter
4 tsps ground ginger
2 tsps ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
500g plain flour
1 tsp salt
1 egg

How to make gingerbread house cookies

Pour the golden syrup, light brown sugar, butter and spices into a saucepan and melt over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved.

Bring the melted ingredients to the boil. Remove from the heat and stir in the bicarbonate of soda. Leave to cool for at least 15 minutes.

Gradually fold in the flour and salt. Beat in the egg.

Tip out on to a clean surface and gently knead. Chill in the fridge for 1 hour.

I find my children are now able to help with most of the process of making these cookies. They love to measure out everything and this makes it a fun recipe to make with them. This recipe makes a lot of gingerbread dough so I split my dough in half and find it keeps really well in the fridge for a couple of days.

Then came the really fun part! We rolled out the dough and went through our collection of cookie cutters to find houses. We make a lot of gingerbread people and I really wanted to make some gingerbread house cookies. We had two sizes which meant the kids could have one each – bliss!

My top tip for baking gingerbread is to place your sheets of uncooked cookies in the freezer for 5 minute before baking. I find this really stops them from spreading whilst in the oven.

We cut out and baked a *lot* of cookies but everyone was really happy and the house smelled gorgeous! We baked our cookies at 160° for 12 minutes, this gave them a lovely colour and crunch. We waited for them to cool down then collected our supplies – icing pens and all kinds of sprinkles.

My children enjoyed decorating their cookies. They added doors and windows, roof tiles and people. It was fun listening to them talking whilst they decorated and there was a lot of finger licking and cookie eating!

They were so happy with their efforts. These our easily our favourite gingerbread cookies and they make pretty lovely handmade gifts wrapped in a cellophane bag and tied with ribbon.