Gingerbread, pear and almond tart

Gingerbread features quite a lot in the M household and I'm sure B will introduce it once baby B is able to push his little kitchen stool into the kitchen and demand to help!! I think B and I were gingerbread mad from an early age as Mum had an old Women's Weekly book that had a great recipe for gingerbread men. We would often make them growing up so any recipes that I stumble across with the words "gingerbread" in them sends me into a cooking frenzy with fond memories of this flavour. This tart that I came across in the Jun/Jul issue of Donna Hay is just gorgeous, the flavours of the pear and almond go so well with the gingerbread base. It was so simple but looked extremely impressive.

You will need:
125g butter, chopped and softened
1/2 cup (90g) brown sugar
2/3 cup (230g) golden syrup
2 1/2 cups (375g) plain flour, sifted
2 teaspoons ground ginger, sifted
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of (baking) soda
1/2 cup (60g) almond meal (ground almonds)
2 tablespoons caster sugar
3 firm brown pears, sliced
1/4 cup (55g) caster sugar, extra
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup (55g) orange marmalade
1 eggwhite, beaten
icing sugar and store bought vanilla custard, to serve

Preheat oven to 160 degrees (325F). Place the butter and sugar in an electric mixer and beat for 8 - 10 minutes or until pale and creamy.

 Add the golden syrup, flour, ginger and bicarbonate of soda and beat until mixture just comes together to form a smooth dough.

 Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes

Roll the dough out between 2 sheets of non-stick baking paper until 5mm thick. Cut out a 20cm x 40cm rectangle. 

Mix to combine the almond meal and sugar and sprinkle down the centre of the rectangle, leaving a 5cm border. 

Place pears , extra sugar, vanilla and marmalade in a bowl and toss to combine.

Top the dough with the pear mixture and fold the edges over the pears. Brush with egg. Bake for 30-35 minutes until the tart is cooked and golden.

Dust with the icing sugar and serve with custard.

Gingerbread Christmas Trees

So this is Christmas.........and what have you done? Well one thing is for sure, M and B haven't done much blogging! So much has happened the last couple of months, we both neglected the blog - sorry guys! B has been busy 'baking' her own little person though, and is due any day now and M has been, well, busy being a mum, a friend, a sister, a wife, a daughter......and everything in between.

Anyway, we thought we'd kick off our return to the blog with some Christmas baking. We both love Christmas and can't wait for our mum's Christmas cake to be ready (I think it's at the soaking in booze stage!), we can't wait to sink our teeth into some fruit mince pies, gobble up some jam cookies and we especially can't wait to have some Christmas baby cuddles with B's little person.  

Gingerbread makes such a good gift any time of the year, and especially at this time of year. We've given homemade gingerbread men as B's gift to her wedding guests and her more recent baby shower guests (iced in the appropriate theme of course!) and I think it makes a lovely gift for our hardworking teachers at the end of the school year. 

Gingerbread Trees

This is the same recipe that I have used for the gingerbread men we have made previously. I made 4 batches and that made around 8 trees and I had left over stars.

165g butter
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 egg yolk
2 1/2 plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
3 teaspoons ginger
3 tablespoons golden syrup

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add edd yolk, beat well. Gradually add sifted dry ingredients and syrup, mix well. Knead lightly.
Divide dough and then roll each portions between two sheets of baking paper to about 3-4mm thickness. I have a set of star cutters that were 5 different sizes.

I allowed 3 of the same size stars for each tree, I guess it just depends on how high you want your tree to end up.

I used 2 quanities of the egg white icing below. (royal icing)

11/2 cups of pure icing sugar
1 egg white
4 drops lemon juice
food colouring optonal

Sift icing sugar. Beat egg white lightly in a small bowl, using a wooden spoon. Add icing sugar, one tablespoon at a time, beating well after each addition. When it reaches piping consistency, beat in lemon juice.

I used some of those coloured little cachous balls to decorate, but you could use anything you want. Then I dusted the tree with some icing sugar at the end.

To stick all your stars together just add some of your royal icing between each star. Also use the icing to add any of your decorations.

Enjoy!

M
x

Gingerbread People

Cooking with the kids can be fun at times or very messy!!! My 3 cherubs LOVE getting their hands into everything. Licking the spoon would rate very highly on their radar but having just one spoon between 3 can sometimes cause riots in our place. Being a rainy afternoon, there was a little bit of cabin fever going around so we decided making gingerbread people would be a nice simple boredom busting activity. Plus the kids can eat the dough and everyone is happy!

This gingerbread recipe is a household favourite in our family from way back. I remember our mum making it and B even had us all making it for her wedding as a special gift for each guest.

The recipe is from The Big Book of Beautiful Biscuits from The Australian Women's Weekly (AWW). Nearly everyone I know has this book tucked away somewhere at the back of their mother or grandmother's cupboard, along with the Children's Birthday Cake Book. I had to purchase my copy off eBay as my mother won't part with hers (when mine arrived in the mail it even smelt of mothballs!!). I also suspect B nabbed mum's spare copy - thanks B!

You will need  (page 22 in AWW's The Big Book of Beautiful Biscuits)
125g butter
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 egg yolk
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
3 teaspoons ground ginger
2 1/2 tablespoons golden syrup  (I have found that you really need more butter and golden syrup just so the mix comes together, so I added extra 2 tbsp of golden syrup and made my butter 160g)

Royal Icing
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 egg white
4 drops of lemon juice
food colouring

Step 1

 Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add egg yolk, beat well. Gradually add sifted dry ingredients and syrup, mix well, knead lightly. Divide dough into portions. Roll each portion between two sheets of greaseproof paper to 3mm thickness.

Step 2
Gently remove greaseproof paper from top. Cut out gingerbread figures with cutter. Remove any excess mixture around the cut-out figures.

Step 3 Lift the figures onto a lined baking tray. Bake in moderate oven 10 minutes. Cool on trays. Spoon royal icing into small plastic bag, snip off one corner to make a piping bag.

Royal Icing
Sift icing sugar. Beat egg white lightly in a small bowl, using a wooden spoon. Add icing sugar, one tablespoon at a time, beating well after each addition. When icing reaches piping consistency, beat in lemon juice and desired food colouring. Makes about 20.

Enjoy!

M xx