Rudolph the red nose gingerbread

I decided I needed to bake something festive given it's only 15 sleeps until Christmas 

Unfortunately I'm back on my diet and every other month of the year, I'll bake with gusto. December however is a different kettle of fish for me as it's that special month where I like to indulge and I absolutely love the festive flavours too so it's a double whammy of misery for me this week. That aside, I'm not one to deny others so today I've been back in the kitchen baking not one, but two things.

This blog post will concentrate on my rudolph biscuits. I decided on these as I watched a 3 year old munch into a gingerbread reindeer from the bakers at 9am this morning. My boys love gingerbread men so I thought it'd be fun to use a gingerbread man cutter and recreate the rudolph I saw this morning. Like this: 

But as I trawled Google images I found this little beauty. Oh my! 

That's one for another day however so once I came across these little cuties I abandoned the upside down gingerbread man and settled on these. 

The bonus being we have loads of M&Ms in the house.

I used the same gingerbread dough recipe as I used to make my gingerbread house last year which is as follows:

350g plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda 

2 tsp ground ginger 

1 tsp ground cinnamon 

125g butter 

175g light brown sugar

1 egg

4 tbsp golden syrup

Get the food processor out and pulse together the flour, bicarbonate, ginger, cinnamon and butter until the mix resembles crumble. 

Add the sugar and pulse. Then add the egg and golden syrup. It will start to clump together a little. Turn out and knead into a ball. 

Trust me it will come together!

Pop in cling film in the fridge to rest for 15 minutes. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 190/170 fan.

Dust the surface with flour and roll out the gingerbread until it's about 5mm thick. Use a round cutter (mine was 7.5cm) to cut out rounds and transfer to baking sheets. Bake for 10 minutes until turning golden then remove from the oven and using a fish slice, remove carefully as they're still quite soft, onto a cooling rack. They'll harden on cooling.you could leave on the baking trays to harden but I needed them to make the next batch.

Once cooled, get your noses ready and melt 40g chocolate. 

I used a number 2 icing tip and icing bag. Fill it with the chocolate then pipe the antlers, eyes and add a blob of chocolate for the nose then pop an M&M on. Let the chocolate harden then eat or bag up and give away as gifts.

Rudolph the red nose gingerbread!