Gala's Ridiculous Gingerbread Idols

28 December 2007, 22:25

Gingerbread Idols
Clockwise from top left: Mary-Kate Olsen, Diana Vreeland, Little Edie, Amanda Lepore, Salvador Dali.

Tonight, I made gingerbread idols! (More fun than just making generic “men”.)

Key characteristics of each person:
<3 Mary-Kate Olsen: Huge sunglasses, messy hair & duck lips.
<3 Diana Vreeland: Lots of rouge & exposed hairline.
<3 Little Edie: Turban & brooch, plus general worried expression.
<3 Amanda Lepore: Big everything.
<3 Salvador Dali: Major facial hair.

The photograph above illustrates why I’m a writer & not an illustrator… ! While it feels slightly sacrilegious to eat Diana Vreeland’s face (eek!), rest assured that this is a great recipe. If you’d like to have a go, here’s what I did.

Ingredients:
Melted butter — for greasing purposes
250g butter — at room temperature
100g (1/2 cup firmly packed) brown sugar
125ml (1/2 cup) golden syrup
1 egg yolk
375g (21/2 cups) plain flour
1 tbs ground ginger
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Plain flour — to dust
Food colouring — for icing (I also used a special writing tube of dark chocolate)

How to do eet!

<3 Preheat your oven to 180°C. Wipe some melted butter over a baking tray, or just lay out tinfoil on an oven tray.

<3 Beat up the butter & sugar in a bowl, until it is all creamy & superb. Add golden syrup & egg yolk. Beat it up some more! Stir in flour, ginger, mixed spice & the bicarb. of soda. Dust a surface with flour & knead the mix until smooth. Chuck it in the fridge for 30 minutes.

<3 Make icing! I tend to do this by using 125g of butter & then just adding cups of icing sugar until it’s about the right consistency. The thicker the better, because otherwise you won’t be able to pipe it properly.

<3 Roll the dough out & cut it into whatever shapes you like. Chuck it in the oven & give each shape a bit of space, because it groooows as it bakes! Bake for about ten minutes & yank ‘em out. They will be really soft but they will firm up later. Let cool.

<3 Seperate your icing into a few bowls of different colours, then pipe on in desired fashion.

<3 Devour! Miam miam.

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