Gala's Ridiculous Gingerbread Idols

28 December 2007, 22:25

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:
Mary-Kate Olsen: Huge sunglasses, messy hair & duck lips.
Diana Vreeland: Lots of rouge & exposed hairline.
Little Edie: Turban & brooch, plus general worried expression.
Amanda Lepore: Big everything.
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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Devour! Miam miam.