Gingerbread Hearts

Yesterday, apart from sweet beetroot, we were supposed to make gingerbread hearts for Valentine’s Day. This brilliant idea came, of course, from my daughter, who apparently just happened to find a heart-shaped cutter somewhere in the cupboard.

But in the evening we went to the festival of lights in Wilanów (Ninka liked it, I wasn’t so keen), and somehow the gingerbread biscuits slipped our minds completely. But, as in nature, nothing is ever lost. Today we remembered them, and there was nothing for it but to get on with it. So here are our post-Valentine’s gingerbread hearts with pink icing.

The recipe is fairly simple, so you shouldn’t have any problems, especially with a little helper at your side (whose favourite part is usually the icing :). The gingerbread biscuits should cool before you decorate them.

And how do you cool them? This is where I’d like to share a thought that struck me while I was looking for various baking recipes (not just gingerbread). On those professional blogs and websites they always tell me to cool something „on a rack”. What the heck does that mean? So I don’t cool anything on a rack, I cool it on a rag. I reckon someone made a typo once and it just caught on, don’t you? Unless you can explain it to me?

Meanwhile, I recommend these gingerbread hearts.

Recipe details:

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Baking time: 10 minutes

Baking temperature: 180 degrees Celsius

Serves: far too many

How many calories: calories sound far too trivial for a batch like this

Ingredients for Valentine’s gingerbread biscuits:

• 100 grams butter (half a block)
• 1/4 cup honey
• half a cup of fine brown sugar
• 2 heaped cups plain wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 2 tablespoons gingerbread spice mix
• 1 hen’s egg
• icing sugar (for icing)
• a piece of beetroot (to make pink icing)

Recipe for simple gingerbread hearts:

I melted the butter with the honey in a saucepan (over a low „heat”). In a large bowl I combined all the dry ingredients and mixed thoroughly. I added the egg and the slightly cooled butter and honey. I mixed thoroughly with a spoon, then with a mixer. This made a crumbly mixture, which I kneaded by hand.

The dough is quite crumbly, so you need to divide it into smaller pieces and roll each one out to a thickness of 3 – 5 millimetres (mine varied). I cut out hearts with the cutter and put them on a baking tray lined with baking paper (my dough made 3 full trays of biscuits). I baked them in an oven preheated to 180 degrees for exactly 10 minutes.

As I mentioned, I cooled the baked biscuits on a cloth. Once they were all cold, we decorated them with icing I’d made from icing sugar and warm water (which I’d previously poured over a piece of beetroot and a little grated beetroot to get that beautiful pink icing colour). Once the icing dries, the biscuits are ready.

Apparently they keep for quite a long time, but I’ve never managed to test that 🙂 Enjoy!

PS 1

If anyone doesn’t know, here’s how to make pink icing. I finely grated a small piece of beetroot into a bowl. I added another piece of peeled beetroot and poured boiling water over it (you can see it in the photo below). The water turned red. I then used it to mix with the icing sugar. Basically, put plenty of icing sugar in a bowl (around 10 – 15 tablespoons), add warm beetroot water and stir very quickly so there are no lumps. If the icing is too thick, add a little water; if it’s too runny, add more icing sugar.

Of course, you needn’t worry that the beetroot will give the icing some strange flavour. It’ll taste exactly the same as ordinary white icing 🙂

PS 2

How do you decorate with icing? As you can see from the photos, we’re not exactly decorating artists. So I won’t offer any advice. All I can say is that Ninka improvises completely, while I make life easier for myself: I simply dip one side in the icing and put it on a plate to dry 🙂