The holidays are over, but I want to continue. Then we bake gingerbread according to an old Finnish recipe. Gingerbread is not just a dessert, but a real concentrate of New Year's mood and joy. Moreover, it is better to bake them with the whole family, imbued with the spirit of the holiday.

And we must thank one monk who lived in the 11th century for this wonderful recipe. According to legend, he confused ground ginger with flour and mistakenly added it to Christmas baking. But in the end, everyone liked the gingerbread so much that the recipe quickly spread throughout Europe.

Ingredients:

For test:

• Flour - 500 g
• Butter at room temperature - 70 g
• Sugar - 120 g
• Egg - 1 pc.
• Ground ginger - 1 tsp
• Fresh grated ginger - 1 tsp
• Ground cinnamon - 1 tsp
• Ground cloves - 0.5 tsp
• Salt - 0.5 tsp
• Liquid honey - 250 g
• Cocoa - 10 g
• Baking powder - 10 g

For glaze:

• Powdered sugar - 250 g
• Egg white - 1 pc.
• Warm water - 2-3 tbsp. l.
• Lemon juice - 1 tbsp. l.
• Food coloring of any color

Cooking method:

1. Place butter, sugar and honey in a saucepan. Heat the contents of the pan over low heat until the sugar dissolves.
2. Mix cloves, ginger and cinnamon. Add cocoa, spices and salt to the honey mixture. As soon as the honey mixture is at room temperature, break the chicken egg into it and mix everything.
3. Mix flour with baking powder and add little by little to the gingerbread mixture. Wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate for 2 hours. Then mix the dough until it is quite smooth. And if the dough is too sticky, add some flour.
4. Form the dough into a ball, put it between two sheets of parchment and roll it out to a thickness of about 3-4 mm. Cut out shapes using cutters. Roll out the excess dough again and cut out the gingerbread cookies until all the dough is gone.
5. Preheat oven to 180°C.
6. If you like softer and more crumbly cookies, bake them on a buttered baking sheet, or if you like crispy cookies, line a baking sheet with baking paper and dust it with flour.
7. Bake gingerbread for no more than 15 minutes.

Life hack: if you want to decorate a Christmas tree with gingerbread, make holes in the dough with a cocktail tube, so that later you can pass a ribbon through which you will hang the gingerbread.

Glaze preparation:

1. In a small bowl, mix all the ingredients for the glaze and beat them with a mixer or blender. You need to beat for a long time - about 10 minutes. To check the readiness, run a knife or fork over the mixture: if the mark remains for 7-10 seconds, and does not disappear immediately, you can start painting.
2. Place the icing in a piping bag and decorate the cookies as you like.

3. Leave the finished gingerbread cookies for 3-4 hours so that the icing is completely frozen.