Last year, Master Frugal made the most amazing homemade Gingerbread wreath at school and it looked amazing! It looked that good that when I shared a photo of it on Instagram, I got about ten DMs asking me to blog about it. I tend to shut my laptop over Christmas though so I never got around to sharing it – until now!
I’m resharing this today as I’ve just made some homemade gingerbread biscuits using this recipe and have had a couple of DMs asking for the recipe.
This is our tweaked recipe from the version they made at school – ours has more ginger in as we love it and we added a cheeky bit of mixed spice to it too as we love our gingerbread very gingery.
Homemade Gingerbread Wreath....
This amazing homemade gingerbread wreath was made by Master Frugal as part of his GCSE food technology class - hence the not so great photos - and tasted amazing as well as being the loveliest Christmas centrepiece!
Ingredients
- How to make a gingerbread wreath
- 350g plain flour
- 175g brown sugar
- 100g butter
- 1 egg
- 5 tablespoons of golden syrup
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- 2 teaspoons of ginger (Master Frugal used more because he loves the smell of the ginger so ours was very gingery)
- Icing Sugar
- Anything you need to decorate - Master Frugal used some cute little gingerbread men and some gold glitter on his
Instructions
- The first thing you need to do is to add the flour, the butter and the bicarbonate of soda into a large mixing bowl.
- Rub the butter into the flour until the mixture looks like a bit like breadcrumbs.
- Add the remaining ingredients and knead the mixture until it's all combined and you can make squidge it into a ball of dough.
At this stage, when I make gingerbread I would chill it in the fridge for at least two hours, removing it about ten minutes before I want to roll it out. This step was missing from Master Frugal's instructions - presumably because he only had a double lesson to make this in so he didn't have time for it but it turned out fab so you can do it my way or the quick way depending on how much time you have. - Whatever you decide, when you're ready to move to the next step roll your dough out on a floured surface until it's about the thickness of two £1 coins.
- To make the Gingerbread wreath shape, Master Frugal tells me that he cut around a dinner plate for the outside of the wreath and a cup for the inside circle cut out. When you've got your shape, transfer it using a fish slice to a baking tray lined with baking paper. If you're going to want to hang your wreath somewhere then use a straw to make a hole in the top. Pop it in the oven for about 10-15 minutes until it's golden brown.
- While your gingerbread wreath is cooking, you need to make your shapes to go on top of the wreath. This time you need to roll out your dough (again, on a floured surface) to about the thickness of one £1 coin and using whatever Christmassy themed cookie cutters you have, you need to cut out your shapes.
- Transfer your shapes to a baking tray lined with baking paper and pop them in the oven until they're golden brown. As the shapes are slightly thinner than the gingerbread wreath, they'll take a little bit less time to cook so I'd start checking after 8 minutes.
- Once your gingerbread wreath and gingerbread shapes have cooled you can start putting everything together. Mix your icing sugar with some water to make quite a thick paste and then use some of that as 'glue' to stick your shapes on to the wreath.
- And for the rest of the decorations - just go wild.
This is so much easier, so much prettier and because it’s less effort to make than a gingerbread house then you don’t even feel as bad when you break it apart to eat.
We’ll definitely be making another one of these this Christmas.
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Do your future self a favour – Pin my homemade gingerbread wreath for later:
