Festive Gingerbread Men

In a large bowl, beat together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy (use an electric beater to save your poor arms). Add the treacle, vanilla and egg and beat.

In a separate bowl, mix together flour, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and baking soda. Then, 1/3 at a time, fold the flour mixture into the sugar and butter bowl. At this point the dough should be sticking together nicely and should be fairly easy to manipulate.

Halve the dough and shape each half into a disc and wrap in cling film. Place both halves in the fridge for a minimum of 4 hours.

Before removing dough from the fridge, preheat oven to 180º (350ºF).

When you remove the dough, place it on a floured surface and roll out until it is roughly 5mm thick. Use gingerbread cookie cutters to cut out gingerbread men. Place on baking trays, around 2 cm apart to make sure they don’t touch when they expand a little in the oven.

Bake for 8–10 minutes, until cookies have risen slightly and hardened around the edges, then leave to cool on a cooling rack.

For the icing:
Add water to the icing sugar a little at a time until you’ve got the right consistency for icing. It should feel fairly stiff when stirring.

Separate the icing sugar into however many colours you are using. Add a couple of drops of food colouring into each and stir in. Add one colour of icing to you piping bag, using a very small round nozzle and start icing! And always remember to wash out your piping bag between colours so that they don’t mix.