In addition to products, the following materials may be useful for making cookies, gingerbread, houses:

1. Cookie cutters (very convenient to use if you cook with children)

2. Or printouts of templates (can be downloaded from the Internet)

3. You can use baby molds from the creative kits.

4. Baking paper

6. Pastry bags for painting

7. Or bags made of food bags, office files, or baking paper.

8. Food colorings or sugar pencils

9. Confectionery sprinkles

10. And, of course, prescription products.

Christmas recipes and gingerbread, there are a lot of cookies and I exist differently national traditions... Let's start with gingerbread and houses.

Gingerbread

Soft scented gingerbread have long been a symbol of Christmas. Gingerbread baking is an art that has undergone a special development in the last century, since gingerbread has been gaining popularity in Europe. In Medieval Europe, where fairs were widespread, gingerbread was sold in various shapes, often gilded and decorated with spices. The fairs became known as "Ginger Fairs" and their participants bought gingerbread as a present from the fair.

Nuremberg in Germany is known as "Gingerbread Capital of the World" due to its central location in the northern trade routes. It was here that the art of making gingerbread cookies of exquisite shapes and ornaments appeared. German fairy tale about "Hantz and Gretel", in which the children discovered a house built entirely of gingerbread dough, sweets and sweet cakes, began the tradition of creating various structures from gingerbread dough.

Nowadays, for many, gingerbread is associated with Christmas, but in fact it is a delicious and original gift at any time of the year - a treat for the whole family. Whether it's a whole castle or ginger cookie wrapped in beautiful paper or in a box and tied with a ribbon, this is a very nice gift. WE WORK WITH GINGER DOUGH There are a few rules to remember when working with ginger dough for the first time:

1. It may be easier for you to roll out the dough in a large layer and cut it out on a baking sheet with a mold so that the products do not distort when you transfer them from the table to the baking sheet.

2. Unless the recipe says otherwise, leave some space on the baking sheet between the gingerbread cookies to allow them to rise. 3. Gingerbread cookies, unlike other cookies, do not become dense and crunchy when removed from the oven. So it's very difficult to tell if it's ready, especially since baking time is so much dependent on the oven. As a rule, if the gingerbread is slightly raised and browned around the edges, it is ready.

4. Leave it on the baking sheet for a few minutes, during which time it begins to turn crispy (if the gingerbread is still soft, return it to the oven for a few minutes). It is very common for gingerbread to lose its shape during baking, but this can be easily fixed by trimming it properly after baking. 5. Large, flat pieces of gingerbread should be refrigerated and stored on a flat surface, otherwise their shape will be distorted. It may be more convenient to bake the gingerbread the day before decorating. If you do this, let it cool completely and then wrap it in parchment or plastic wrap.

RECIPE FOR CHRISTMAS GINGERBREAD Wreath look

Gingerbread NECKLACE RECIPE look

RECIPE FOR GINGER BREAD "PUZZLE GAME" watch .

RECIPE STAINED GLASS CANDY GLASSES look

RECIPE GINGERBREAD LOOK .

GINGER COOKIE RECIPE FROM YULIA VYSOTSKAYA

RECIPE FOR GINGERRY AND CHOCOLATE COOKIES FOR DECORING A FIR-TREE FROM ALEXANDER SELEZNEV

CHRISTMAS COOKIE RECIPE

Gingerbread House Recipe

RECIPE FOR GREW AND HONEY SUGAR Dough

RECIPE "GINGERBREAD HOUSE-HUNDRED"

RECIPE "Gingerbread Bowls"

RECIPE "POMORIAN GOATS"

Goats or goats are figurines made of dough, decorated and baked. Name roe not formed from a word goat or roe, and from the Pomeranian meaning "curl", "snake"

Kozuli were originally a national delicacy of the Pomors (residents of the Arkhangelsk province), who made them only for Christmas. Currently, roe deer is made in the Arkhangelsk and Murmansk regions, as well as in the Urals. Cossul is also considered to be a type of gingerbread. Also, roes made by children are used as toys.

NIKOLAYCHIKI on Saint Nicholas Day

Saint Nicholas Day is not only children's party... The morning of December 19 is also eagerly awaited by adults. Firstly, to see the joyful and enthusiastic faces of their children, and secondly, in the hope that the Wonderworker Nicholas in the person of her husband or wife, daughter or son will also reward them for good behavior.

The most popular gifts on this day, both in the Orthodox and Catholic worlds, are toys, sweets, cakes, fruits, nuts, etc. But among the Slavs, kind Nikolai presented obedient children with "nikolaychiki" - honey cookies.

It is necessary to prepare "nikolaychiki" for this magical holiday with your own hands. Every nation has its own traditional recipe which has some distinctive features. But the meaning and purpose of making gingerbread is the same - to honor the memory of St. Nicholas, who is the guardian and protector of our children.

RECIPE NIKOLAYCHIKOV look

LISTING OF GINGERBREADS AND BISCUITS

HOW TO MAKE A SNOWMAN

Icing at home

An idea from last year, but this video has ideas on how to decorate cookies.

And finally, a small selection of Christmas gingerbread and cookie painting ideas for your inspiration!

The tasting will wait! Let this house first serve as a cute New Year's decoration, and only then - as a sweet treat.

For the test:

• 250 g wheat flour
• 250 g rye flour
• 125 g brown sugar
• 25 g cocoa
• 250 g honey
• 125 g butter
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ¼ tsp ground cloves
• ¼ tsp ground ginger
• ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 tsp soda

For glaze:

• 1 protein
• 230 g icing sugar
• a pinch of citric acid

Sift the flour and mix all the flour, cocoa, ground nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, ginger. Divide the mixture into 2 parts.

Mix sugar, honey and butter in a saucepan. Heat until sugar dissolves.

Put half of the flour mixture and mix well.

Then add the eggs and stir quickly to prevent the eggs from curdling.

Add some more flour and soda. Mix everything thoroughly.

Transfer the dough to the countertop and knead well with your hands.

Let the dough stand for several hours. Roll out the dough into a layer 5 mm thick.

Cut out all the walls and the roof of the house from the dough according to the template.

Bake the dough in the oven at 200 ° C for 20 minutes.

GLAZE... Beat the protein a little and gradually add the icing sugar into it, continuing to beat. Add citric acid at the end.

Glue the cooled parts of the house and paint with glaze. Let it freeze.

New Year's log

A sweet roll in the shape of a log is a traditional sweet treat for Christmas in Europe and America.

• 6 eggs
• 6 tbsp Sahara
• 140 g flour
• 3 tbsp cocoa
• ½ tsp baking powder

For filling:

• 200 ml milk
• 2 tbsp flour
• 500 g cream cheese
• 1 egg
• 10 g vanilla sugar
• 5 tbsp icing sugar
• 2 large bananas

Separate the yolks from the proteins. Beat egg whites with half sugar until peaks form. Beat the yolks with the second half of the sugar until fluffy.

Mix cocoa with flour, baking powder and add to the proteins. Then mix the protein mixture and the yolks.

Transfer the dough to a baking sheet with parchment and bake at 210 ° C for 7 minutes.

For the filling, sift the flour. Heat milk with flour, stirring constantly, until pasty. Then remove the mixture from heat and add the egg, stirring.

Allow to cool completely. Whisk the cooled cream and butter room temperature. Add vanilla sugar, powdered sugar and stir.

Apply the cream to the biscuit, spreading it in a thin layer. Peel the bananas and place whole along the long edge of the dough. Roll up the roll gently.

Decorate the roll with the remaining cream and decor. Put the roll in the refrigerator for 3 hours, soak in the cream and harden.

Meringue "Snowmen"

Cute snowmen made from meringue circles can serve not only as a treat, but also as a sweet gift for your guests.

• 3 egg whites
• a pinch of salt
• 60 g granulated sugar
• 60 g icing sugar

For decoration:

• chocolate candies
• candied fruit
• marzipan mass
• icing(see frosting recipe in gingerbread house recipe)

Beat the whites with salt with a mixer until lush foam and peaks form. Add sugar gradually while whisking.

Finally add the sifted icing sugar and beat again until peaks form.

Transfer the whipped protein to a pastry bag and place three different sized circles on a baking sheet with parchment.

Bake the meringues for 1 hour at 100 ° C. Leave the oven door open for the first 15 minutes.

Fold the finished meringue on top of each other, glue it with glaze in the form of snowmen and decorate with decor.

Into the book "New Year sweets", which was published by the Eksmo publishing house, the most famous confectioner of the country and a great friend of our magazine, Alexander Seleznev, included the best New Year's recipes to create an unforgettable holiday and a special cozy atmosphere. Cakes, pastries, cookies and muffins ... Want to become a famous pastry chef? Try to cook holiday dessert according to recipes from the new book! All the recipes selected for her are quite simple and do not require the purchase of rare and expensive products.

Increasingly on New Year and Christmas bake gingerbread. Housewives purchase molds in advance so that the treat is not only tasty, but also beautiful. The kids really like gingerbread men. After all, you can also play with them! ..

Famous pastry chef Alexander Seleznev shared proprietary recipe cooking gingerbread men.

Instagram @chefalexmonaco

Ingredients for the dough:

• 350 g honey
• 125g brown sugar (white sugar can also be used)
• 125 g butter
• 540 g flour
• 2 teaspoons of baking soda (quenched with lemon juice)
• 1 tbsp. a spoonful of a mixture of different spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom, ginger)
• 1 egg
• Ingredients for the glaze:
• 1 egg white
• 1 tbsp. a spoonful of lemon juice
• 180 g icing sugar

Preparation:

1. Combine honey, sugar and butter in a saucepan. Then, stirring constantly, heat the mixture until the oil dissolves.
2. In a separate container, add to the soda flour previously quenched with lemon juice.
3. Pour the heated honey, sugar and butter mixture into the flour. Add aromatic spices and egg. Knead the dough.
4. Leave the dough at room temperature overnight. (And this is the first professional secret from Alexander Seleznev. After all, many housewives leave the dough to "rest" in the refrigerator.) Then roll it out, cut out the little men and bake for 12 minutes at 180 degrees.
5. Cool the gingerbread cookies and paint with icing.

Instagram @chefalexmonaco

The pastry chef also told about the secret of its preparation:

Made with raw protein, powdered sugar and lemon juice. It is imperative to add the last ingredient - with it, the glaze will harden faster. You need to take the finest powdered sugar so that there are no grains in the glaze later. And eggs are necessarily the freshest, dietary ones, they are the safest.

When you beat the whites and add the powder, the glaze should not drain from the whisk, but solidify on it in a tight triangle. So the amount of powder must be adjusted by eye, put more - the glaze will harden into a lump, less - it will turn out to be liquid.

As you knead the glaze, pour it into a pastry syringe or bag, and cover the remains with cling film - otherwise it will dry quickly, dry pieces will come across in it and get stuck in a syringe or bag.

Instagram @margo_dibrova

Some subscribers to the personal blog of Alexander Seleznev admitted that they have already tried the gingerbread made according to this recipe. Here's one of the reviews:

Thanks a lot for the recipe! The gingerbread cookies are fragrant and do not dry for a long time, it is a pleasure to work with this dough.

Do you bake gingerbread men for the New Year?

Yes, yes, I already showed you this house last year. But she never wrote a recipe for it. Now I am urgently correcting myself, while there is time before the New Year. I made it together with delicious Christmas gingerbread, but this year I probably won't dare to repeat it :)) But I will definitely bake the gingerbread together with my friend Olya, and, of course, I will not forget about the delicious Christmas fruitcake from Irina Chadeika.

I'll make a reservation right away - the dough for the house is very tasty, but it gets stale quickly. Those. choose yourself, or you make it and eat it right away, or just use it as an entourage for the New Year. Although ... maybe you have strong teeth or you like to dip "croutons" in tea :)

The result looks stunning, amaze all the guests - I promise!

Products for 1 house:

1 kg. honey
1/4 l. water
650 g rye flour
600 g of premium flour
100 g of chopped lemon and orange peel candied fruits
40 g gingerbread spices
30 g baking soda
2 tbsp. l. lemon juice
3 squirrels
300 g icing sugar

1. Cut the candied fruit into cubes and roll a little in flour.

2. Prepare the herbs. It can be a mixture of cocoa, cinnamon, grated nutmeg and ground ginger, cloves. Focus on your taste.

3. Boil honey with water and let cool.

4. Sift flour into a large bowl, add chopped candied fruits and spices. In the middle, you need to make a depression and pour cooled honey and water there. Stir everything well and finally add baking soda (DO NOT EXTINGUISH!). Knead a smooth, hard dough. Cover it or wrap it in foil and let it sit for 1-2 days to soften it.

5. Cut out a template for a house from cardboard. The template is here.

a) The largest part in the center is the base. It is best to make it out last from the remains of the dough. On the left are the elements of the roof. On the right are the sides, front and back of the house.

b) Do not forget about the fence, pipe, door and shutters for the window. I did all this on my own, I calculated the exact dimensions according to the ready-made patterns of the house.

c) If you want the side walls and front of the house to look like logs, I will show you how I coped with this task.

It looked like this to me

6. We cut out or sculpt all the necessary parts from the dough. They need to be baked on a greased baking sheet at 200 degrees until browning. After baking, all parts must be well cooled.

7. This is how I baked the front and back of the house. Twisted small rollers and laid them on a lined surface baking paper... It is not necessary here to make all the side parts even, then all this can be corrected.

After the details were baked, I immediately gave the desired shape with a sharp knife, and also cut out the window and door. This should be done while the dough is hot and soft.

8. The sides are already baked, as well as the door and pipe. Note that the door and window at the front of the house have already been cut.

9. Here I have already baked the base and two parts of the roof. I made the roof from rectangular strips of dough, which I laid out next to each other. When baked, they all come together tightly.

10. Don't forget about the details. In this way, I baked a fence from the remains of the dough. You can also bake Christmas trees.

11. After all our parts have cooled down well, we need to assemble our house. The book advises to collect with the help of protein glaze, but to be honest, this is not a very suitable option. I played it safe and cooked thick sugar syrup, with which she glued all the details. After you glue everything together, you need to leave it for at least a few hours (or better overnight) so that all the parts adhere well to each other.

12. Now it's time to decorate our Gingerbread house... To do this, prepare the icing - very carefully mix the protein with powdered sugar and lemon juice ohm. Let's fill a cornet * with this glaze and decorate our house with "snow drifts"

*Cornet

13. The final result is shown in the very first picture. I'll show you various details here. I also blinded a little bunny with a carrot from marzipan, how to do it - I spied on Alexander Seleznev's program.

Gingerbread is a delicious and aromatic delicacy that has been a symbol of Christmas for several centuries. Today we will tell you where and how gingerbread cookies appeared, we will give advice on their preparation, recipes for dark and light gingerbread cookies, and at the end of the article you will find a surprise: ready-made templates for cutting gingerbread cookies and examples of their glaze painting!

A bit of history

Gingerbread is a very ancient delicacy. The prototype of gingerbread was known even before our era in Ancient Egypt. In Russia, gingerbread appeared in the ninth century, they were called "honey bread" because of a large number honey in their composition. Various spices began to be added much later, when they were brought from the countries of the Middle East and India. The gingerbread cookies were baked in the form of various animals, so they were not only delicious treat but also toys for children.

Great Britain is considered the birthplace of gingerbread. Legend has it that the gingerbread recipe and the ginger itself were brought by medieval crusaders. Ginger was a symbol of health, which is why it was added to many Christmas sweets. Since then, Catholics have developed a tradition of baking gingerbread for Christmas.

By the way, in Europe and the USA, gingerbread is very often baked in the shape of a man - the so-called Gingerbread Man. This is a popular character from an old fairy tale, similar in plot to the fairy tale "Kolobok".

Now the German city of Nuremberg is called the "gingerbread capital of the world". There is a whole market where you can buy gingerbread made according to an old recipe.

Source: lidovky.cz

1. In addition to ginger, use cinnamon, cloves, coriander, cardamom, nutmeg, allspice, and for even more piquancy - orange peel or cocoa.
2. To make the gingerbread cookies fragrant and acquire a pleasant color, use natural dark honey instead of sugar.
3. Instead of baking soda, you can add two teaspoons of brandy as a baking powder.
4. The dough can be raw or custard. Raw dough is made when all the ingredients are simply mixed together. Choux - when honey is heated with water (milk) and butter.
5. Gingerbread is also an excellent Christmas tree decoration. Make a thread hole in them before baking.
6. Before you put the gingerbread cookies in the oven, brush them with an egg - this will give them a glossy shine.
7. It can be difficult to know if the gingerbread is ready or not. If they are browned around the edges, have risen a little, then you can remove them from the oven.
8. Put the finished gingerbread cookies on a flat surface so as not to spoil their shape.
9. You don't need to decorate gingerbread right away. Better to bake them in the evening and paint them in the morning. Protein glaze can be tinted with berry juice.
10. It turns out that gingerbread should "ripen", that is, they need time to become more tasty and aromatic - at least a week. Put the gingerbread in glass jar and put an orange peel or apple wedge on top of them. Close the cover securely. Remember to change the orange skin or apple for a fresh one every day for a week.

Source: mindblowingpicture.com

Chocolate gingerbread

Ingredients:

• flour, 175 g
• ground ginger, 1 tsp.
• ground cinnamon, ½ tsp.
• ground cloves, ½ tsp.
• baking powder or soda, 1.5 tsp.
• salt, a pinch
• cocoa, 1 tsp.
• butter, 100 g
• sugar or honey, 100 g
• egg, 2 pcs.
• powdered sugar, ½ st.
• lemon juice, 1 tablespoon

Preparation:

Sift flour, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, baking powder or baking soda, a pinch of salt, cocoa into a bowl. Add soft cubes of butter and stir the dough with your hands - you should get a crumbly mass. Then add sugar or honey, one egg (leave the other for the protein icing or grease the gingerbread to make them shine) and knead the dough. Roll it into a ball, wrap it up cling film and refrigerate for two hours. After that, roll out the dough and cut out the gingerbread cookies using the templates that you can find at the end of the article. Sprinkle a baking sheet with flour (or cover parchment paper) and place the gingerbread on it. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees for about 15 minutes.

Chilled gingerbread should be painted with protein glaze. To do this, beat one protein until stable peaks (this is when it does not pour out of the bowl, if you raise it over your head), gradually adding the powdered sugar. Add lemon juice at the end and beat again for 10 seconds. Put the resulting icing in a pastry bag and decorate the gingerbread cookies as your fantasy tells you. Let the glaze harden for about half an hour.

Source: schastie-mamy.ru

Light gingerbread

Ingredients:

• flour, 250 g
• ground ginger, 1.5 tsp.
• ground cinnamon, 1 tsp.
• ground nutmeg, ½ tsp.
• ground cloves, ½ tsp.
• baking powder or soda, ½ tsp.
• yolks, 4 pcs.
• sugar, 150 g
• milk, 1 tbsp.
• honey, 150 g
• butter, 50 g
• protein, 2 pcs.
• icing sugar, ½ tbsp.
• lemon juice, 1 tablespoon

Preparation:

Sift flour, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and baking powder (baking soda) into a bowl. Whisk the yolks with sugar. Pour milk, honey and butter into a saucepan. Heat all this, stirring, bring to homogeneous mass but don't let it boil. Then pour this mixture and yolks with sugar to the dry ingredients, knead the dough. After that, roll it out and cut the gingerbread cookies using the templates that you can find at the end of the article. Place the gingerbread cookies on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake in the oven at 200 degrees for 15 minutes. Decorate the cooled gingerbread cookies with protein glaze - in the same way as described in the previous recipe.