Bakespiration Button Biscuits

Gingerbread Button Biscuits

I came across this Bakespiration challenge when linking up with Kids in the Kitchen a few weeks ago. As my baking is generally far from inspirational, I couldn't see myself entering. But then we had a success with these gingerbread biscuits and I was so pleased with how they turned out, we thought we'd blog about it.

Unlike some gingerbread recipes that involve heating and melting various ingredients, this one is a simple dough to mix together and then roll out and bake so it is ideal for the kids to get involved.

Miss T got stuck in helping to make the dough and she enjoyed rolling out the dough and using cutters. As well as our 'buttons' she also got carried away making teddy bears, hearts, stars and triangles too!

A great recipe for the kids to help with!

Here's the recipe, then I'll show you how we iced them to look like fun colourful buttons.

Ingredients: (we made a huge batch - but you could halve the quantities if desired)
700g plain flour
4 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
250g diced butter
300g soft dark brown sugar
8 tbsp golden syrup
2 eggs, beaten

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180C and line a couple of large baking trays with baking paper. (You might need to make them in batches).
2. Mix together the flour, ginger, and bicarbonate of soda. Then rub in the butter with your fingers until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.
3. Add the sugar and mix. Then add the golden syrup and eggs. Mix to make a dough (you may need a splash of water if it is too dry).

No need to melt together any of the ingredients first, just mix them in a bowl

4. Knead on a lightly floured surface.
5. Although not essential, if you wrap the dough in clingfilm at this stage and place in the fridge for 30 minutes, it will become a lot easier to roll out and handle.
6. Roll out the dough, but not too thinly. About a 5mm thickness is just right.
7. Cut out circles using a cutter as your 'buttons'. You can also cut out other shapes if you like.
8. I then used a piping bag nozzle with a circular end to cut out my 'button holes'.
9. Bake in the oven for 5 minutes. Then remove from the oven and use your piping bag nozzle as a cutter again to cut through the same button holes again. This is to tidy them up where they have 'spread' during cooking and will prevent the holes from closing up completely.

10. Place back in the oven for a further 5 minutes until cooked and golden brown. They may still appear soft as this point but they will become harder when cooled. Leave to cool.

Now onto the icing stage:
1. We used gel colours to colour some ready-to-roll fondant icing into different colours. We decided to have orange, yellow, green, purple, blue and pink buttons.

2. Using a little icing sugar to dust the surface and dust a rolling pin, roll out each colour of icing and cut into circles using cutters. You can use the same size cutter as you did for the dough because the biscuit will have spread to a slightly bigger size during cooking and so the icing circle will still fit onto it.

3. Mix together a little icing sugar with a tiny drop of water to make an edible 'glue'. Then use this to stick the icing circles onto your biscuit 'buttons'.

4. Next use a skewer to make a small hole or indent to mark where your biscuit button holes are. Then using your trusty piping bag nozzle again, cut the hole more neatly. You can also pipe some black circles to add detail on some of the buttons if you wish too.

5. Finally, you can lace through a few strawberry laces as 'threads' in your buttons.

A simple to make gingerbread recipe, made to look extra special by adding the icing.

This is my entry into the Bakespiration challenge falling into the category of Biscuits. Find out more about the Bakespiration competition here at on Stuck in the tree and find out more about Stuck in the tree here.