Halloween Gingerbread shapes

Everyone loves a gingerbread man, and as Delia tells us this recipe is 'ideal for children' it seemed like a good idea to tackle this recipe with my niece and nephew, Kate and Ben, aged 3 and 5. The recipe is on page 166 of Delia's Cakes and while she calls them gingerbread 'men', they can be made with any shaped cutter. Having carved pumpkins earlier that day, we kept with the Halloween theme and decided on some Halloween shapes for our biscuits.

The excitement of sleeping in a bed that wasn't her own was too much for Kate to resist, so while she napped in the afternoon, Ben and I got to work making the gingerbread biscuit mix. Only minor burns were suffered during the melting process (in spite of the repeated chorus of 'don't touch that Ben') and Ben seemed to enjoy helping me mix all the ingredients, although seemed to enjoy more letting me do the hard work while he looked on.

I was a bit worried about the patience required in waiting for the dough to cool enough to work with it - it makes essentially a sticky paste which then cools in the fridge for around half an hour to become a consistency that allows you to roll it out. An Avengers colouring book helped (me more than Ben!) with killing time while it cooled.

By the time the dough was ready to roll out, Kate had re-appeared and was keen to cut out shapes with Ben and I - we had pumpkin shapes, witches, a moon and more - all very seasonal. Rolling the dough out got a bit messy when done with small hands so I did most of the rolling and the children were happy to cut out their shapes and set them out on the baking trays. 10-15 minutes in the oven and they were ready (and smelled amazing). To be honest, if you have such interesting shapes, they don't need any icing, but I thought it would add an extra element of fun, so we made some simple icing with icing sugar, water and orange food colouring to spread on the pumpkin shaped biscuits - Ben and Kate were really good at this and even managed to keep the majority of sprinkles on the biscuits and not on the floor (miracle!). Kate suggested we use some raisins for eyes, and Ben insisted on some Star Wars messages to be written on top in icing, so the result was a truly unique selection of Halloween biscuits!

The great thing about this is that all you need is a themed cutter and this activity can be made suitable for any time of year or occasion - it's fun to decorate them, and easy to do. It's great fun to do with kids, and they absolutely love tucking in to them afterwards!