Happy December 3rd, friends! If you're playing along at home, you'll have spotted all the differences on a delicious gingerbread buffet. And since everybody loves a cakey feast, particularly we, cake loving beasts,  it seems only right to share our gingerbread recipe with you to make delicious biccies like these:

This is an amended version of a blog recipe, which was an amended version of a famous American chef's - which is how recipes transcend history and the world these days, isn't it? They're quite spicy biscuits, and we like them spicier still than this recipe sometimes, as the mood takes us. For now we've kept them fairly gentle. The recipe makes absolutely tons of biscuits, but we're not gonna give a number because it'll vary depending on how thin you roll 'em and how big your cookie cutter is!

Ingredients:

475g plain flour (plus some extra for dusting when you roll it out)

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp ground cinnamon

Half tsp ground cloves

Half tsp black pepper

Half a nutmeg, grated

Quarter tsp ground allspice

3/4 of a tsp salt

1 large egg

100g sugar (you can use demerara, golden caster etc if you have it laying around, it'll make them more golden, but for this batch I just used plain old granulated white sugar)

120g butter - or butter baking replacement  -at room temperature or you're in for a world of hurt

120ml golden syrup - or if you're fancy (or American, and can get it easily) molasses. Comes out darker, and I used golden syrup here.

A little water to bring it together.

Method:

1) Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and spices in a bowl and put to one side.

2) Using an electric whisk or mixer, beat the butter (cube it first)  and the sugar together 'til it's fluffy in a second bowl. Then add the egg and golden syrup, still beating til it's smooth.

3) Add the spiced flour mix, and mix slowly (I used a dough hook for this) until it comes together. If it's still real dry you can add a few drops of water at a time 'til it forms a ball. You want the dough to only just combine into a ball.

4) Divide it into two and wrap each precious cargo in clingfilm, then leave it in the fridge for anything from an hour to overnight.

5) When your dough has firmed up, set your oven preheating to 190 degrees Celsius/375 Farenheit. Roll your dough out on a lightly floured surface until it's a quarter of an inch thick, and then use a cookie cutter to cut out your shapes. Extra points from Hobb if it's a rat good wintery shape like a star or something cool ike that.

6) Spread your shapes out a couple of inches apart on baking trays lined with parchment paper, or with a silicone baking mat.

7) Bake them until they're golden around the edges - that's about 12-15 minutes. Then remove them to wire racks to cool.

8) They're lovely dusted with icing sugar or cinnamon, or decorated with royal icing (that's the hard white icing you can pipe on in pretty shapes). We used royal icing but got all drizzly with it for fun! (Not gonna tell you how to make that because it involves raw egg white, and on your own head be it.)

And there you have it, lovely spiced gingerbread that packs a festive punch!

We hope you have fun baking the thousand cookies you'll have dough for. We certainly did!

See you tomorrow!

Fay & Martyn