Creative baking with kids

I’m pretty sure it’s not just my kids that insist on a biscuit with milk. My eldest feels particularly hard done by if he doesn’t get this before bedtime. There are always usually complaints if we have no biscuits in the house, you know I’m chief biscuit buyer apparently. I buy them and they’re gone just as quick and it’s not just my kids that are to blame. My husband is the worst culprit! If I buy some particularly moreish biscuits then I can expect them to be polished off in a day and sometimes before I even get to try one.

So due to the fact I am fed up of the relentless buying of biscuits, I thought we would have a crack at making more of our own. That way, when I can’t be bothered to go to the shops, I can rustle some up from ingredients I find in the cupboard and fridge. As I’m writing this, I realise that popping to the shops would be a lot easier…

Anyhow, when I received this cookie stamp set to try out, I wanted to think of an easy recipe that always turns out well and would be great for stamping. So I adapted the recipe from my gingerbread house kit and decided to make some gingerbread biscuits that the boys would love to have with that all important glass of milk.

What you’ll need:

90g butter

65g brown sugar

150g golden syrup (4 tbsp)

1/2 tbsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Extra flour for rolling

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 170°C

Melt the butter in a large pan over a low heat, then add the sugar and syrup. Remove from the heat and stir.

Add the dry ingredients and mix until blended into a thick dough (I did this in my mixer using the dough hook).

Place a sheet of baking paper onto a work surface and roll the dough out to the thickness you would like your biscuits. Flour when necessary to avoid the dough sticking to the rolling pin. Then place your chosen stamp onto the dough and cut around the stamp with a knife so you are able to use a pallette knife to lift them onto the baking tray (already lined with baking paper).

Make sure there is enough space between the biscuits and then bake them for 15-20 minutes.

Careful lift them onto a wire rack and allow them to cool.

Then tuck in!

I used my new measuring spoons during this recipe. Doing spoon measurements opposed to weight is extremely handy when adding syrup, it’s a messy business! I had some very boring ordinary ones before and I love the retro feel of these ones.

If you have an ‘eager’ helper with you like I did, then baking biscuits is quite a good way to get them involved. I must admit I do get frustrated when they insist on helping as most of the time it just breeds chaos and mess. I like to clean up as I go along and that can be tricky with children under your feet. Baby Beastie was more than happy to be given his own ball of dough to roll with his mini rolling pin (a special scone rolling pin I have) and that kept him amused and away from the actual biscuits going into the oven.

Ps. Prepare for kids to fall out over which stamped biscuit they have. It was all about the smiley faces here.

I received some very handy bits and pieces from MeinCupcake (link to UK shop at the bottom of the site) to encourage lots of lovely baking. Now I have no excuse to not keep making biscuits and cake 🙂