welcome to the organic cook blog: Spelt gingerbread men

welcome to the organic cook blog: Spelt gingerbread men: This weeks recipe is from Susan our wonderful cook, and super organic mamma Thanks for sharing your recipe Susan I can't wait ...

Spelt gingerbread men

This weeks recipe is from Susan our wonderful cook, and super organic mamma

Thanks for sharing your recipe Susan I can't wait to try them with my niece Mia.

Hi Belinda - I baked some really yummy spelt gingerbread men with my daughter Olivia this afternoon so thought I would pass on the recipe! I adapted the recipe from a few different recipes that I found, to make it more nutrient dense and a little lighter on the sugar, replaced brown sugar and golden syrup with molasses sugar and a little bit of honey. Changed the flour to spelt, added some fresh ginger and ditched all modern icing sugar decoration and went back to the old women in the fairytale's idea of currants and orange peel! Baking the gingerbread men turned out to be a great afternoon with the kids, Olivia loved decorating them and we ate them together reading the fairytale over and over :-)


Ingredients

125g organic butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup, firmly packed molasses sugar (I used Billington’s brand)
1/4 cup honey
1 large organic egg, separated
2 1/2 cups spelt flour
1 tbs ground ginger
½ - 1 tsp of finely grated fresh ginger
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Extra flour, to dust
Currants, raisins and fine strips of orange rind – to decorate

Method

Preheat oven to 180°C. Line 2 trays with baking paper (or lightly grease with melted butter)

Beat the butter and sugar in a bowl until paler and creamy. Add the honey and egg yolk and beat until combined. Stir in the flour, fresh and dried ginger, mixed spice and bicarb soda. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth. Press dough into a disc. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 30 minutes to rest.

Place the dough between 2 sheets of baking paper and roll out until about ½ cm thick. Use gingerbread man cutter to cut out shapes. Place on trays about 3cm apart. Decorate using currants for eyes and nose, orange rind for mouth and raisins or sultanas for buttons.

Bake in oven for 7-10 minutes or until brown (I like mine crunchy so cook for 10, but reduce time if you like the gingerbread soft). Remove from oven. Transfer to a rack to cool.

Summer berry walnut crumble

Just because summer is at our doorstep doesn't mean we need to put away our favourite dessert crumble!

This is a special strawberry, raspberry and mulberry crumble I made for my boyfriend and I snuck in some rosewater and it was truly magic.

As berries are very tender the best way to handle is very gently and prepare quickly. I actually used frozen organic raspberries and fresh mulberries from a neighbours tree and strawberries cut into quarters with a sprinkling of rapadura sugar, it's a quick easy and nutritious recipe packed with antioxidants

2 cups raspberries (frozen best)
1 cup fresh strawberries (washed and cut into quarters)
1 cup mulberries (pick stalks off)
2 tablespoons rapadura sugar (to sweeten)
2 tablespoons rosewater
1/2 cup spelt flour
80g organic butter, melted
1/4 cup oats
1/4 cup walnuts roasted

Place the raspberries and strawberries into a baking dish or pyrex, sprinkle with the rosewater and sugar and gently stir around with a spoon.

In another bowl mix the oats, melted butter, flour and roasted walnuts gently drop little dobs of the crumble on top of the raspberry mixture, it will sink through but don't worry too much about it.

Put some foil on your cooking vessel and into the oven for 15020 minutes on 165 degrees