“Run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m a marbled gingerbread man!”
When I think of Christmas baking, of course gingerbread men come to mind! Making gingerbread men requires a really good dough recipe, so make sure you check ours out, because rolling out cookies to cut can be a pain in the bum. You can decorate these gingerbread men however you want, but I wanted to make sure that I showed you a different way to do them, in case you were up for a baking challenge this holiday.
Marbling the royal icing creates a really cool effect . . . almost psychedelic . . . and it’s surprisingly easy when I show you how to do it. You can use any colour combination that you want- I went with the traditional red and green, but I think pinks and purples would be pretty too. Pretty much any colour goes for Christmas now. I was at Target the other day and the Christmas bulb pack they were selling had pink, purple and aqua in it, wrap that up in some white sparkly garland and you totally have a non-traditional, but beautifully decorated house! I should have bought that stuff . . . what was I thinking? I’m off to go get it.
Gingerbread Men
Ingredients:
Gingerbread dough
Gingerbread man cookie cutter
Red, green and white royal icing
Procedure:
Roll out dough and cut into gingerbread man cookies. Bake at 350F for around 14 minutes in a preheated oven. When cookies are cooled decorate with royal icing. Using flooding consistency white royal icing pipe a round belly onto the cookie. Using flooding consistency red icing, pipe two lines in an “x” on top of the white icing. Using flooding consistency green icing, pipe two lines in a “+” on top of the white and red icings. Using a toothpick start in the center and work your way outwards in a circular motion. Allow to dry for about 20 minutes. Pipe mittens, hat, gloves and a scarf onto the snowman. Using stiff consistency white royal icing add a zigzag fringe to the mittens, boots and hat. Allow to dry before serving or stacking. You can store these between sheets of parchment paper.
HI Jen, I love watching your youtube tutorials. You are fantastic. I have a question about your royal icing. I started out using Wilton’s royal icing recipe, and while you can achieve good detail work, it gets too hard to actually enjoy the cookie. So I use a glaze icing made with powdered sugar, milk, corn syrup and vanilla and almond extract. It tastes good, but you don’t get good detail work from it. So my question… Does your royal icing actually taste good and can you eat the cookie without risking breaking a tooth. Seems like all the Royal icing recipes dry too hard. Help!
Thanks Jen
Royal icing is supposed to dry hard, which is the point of it…sorry to break it to you. With that said though, it shouldn’t be so hard as to hurt your teeth/mouth while biting into it. As far as your opinion on whether it tastes good or not, that is a personal preference. I ran a business and sold many many cookies with this icing, so I would have to say yes it does.