Festive Gingerbread

1. Preheat the oven to 170ºC, gas mark 3. Line 2 large baking trays with baking parchment. Melt the butter, sugar and syrup together in a medium saucepan, stirring occasionally, then remove from the heat.

2. Sieve the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ginger into a bowl, then stir the melted ingredients into the dry ingredients to make a stiff dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and roll to a thickness of about 5mm.

3. Stamp shapes out of the dough using Waitrose Cooking Christmas Cookie Cutters or cut round festive templates. Place the shapes onto the lined baking trays and bake, in batches, for 9–10 minutes until golden brown.

4. Remove from the oven. While still warm, use a skewer or chopstick to make any holes that you may need to hang up the biscuits with ribbon or string. Leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

5. Mix together the icing sugar with a splash of water to make thick icing then drizzle or pipe over the biscuits and decorate with sprinkles. The gingerbread biscuits can be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

Other decorating ideas

For Christmas puddings, dip round gingerbread biscuits into melted white chocolate, and decorate with Waitrose Christmas Holly & Berry Sprinkles.

For Rudolph the reindeer, pipe melted dark chocolate onto round gingerbread biscuits to make antler shapes, and pipe dots for the eyes and nose. Roll a piece of red fondant icing into a ball and stick onto the nose dot.

Courtesy of Waitrose