The Winter holidays are a wonderful time to come together as a family. The weather here in the UK often means more time spent indoors and two of our favourite activities during this time are to craft and bake together. As children, these are the special family moments that stick in our memories and form our traditions as we go on to have families of our own.

Our friend Veronika Goisova shares the Gingerbread recipe that has become a part of her annual family festivities…

  "I started baking gingerbread cookies with my kids every year before Christmas, when my now 17 year-old was just a toddler.

All I can say is to try and embrace the mess, the odd shapes, the frustration, the crying because the dough is too sticky, and piles of crumbs and icing all over the kids and the house. It won't be like that forever! Just like everything with kids, this also is just a season.

These days my kids are pretty much professionals, and we could sell our cookies at a Christmas market if we wanted to, but do I miss those messy sticky days of baking with them when they were just babies - yes, I miss it very, very much! No big expectations, but having fun together is what works for me when doing just about any craft or cooking with my kids.

Some years I mix my own gingerbread spice and sometimes I just buy the mix in one of the polish stores here in Canada, because that's the same packet most people would use back home in Europe.

There are of course differences in every Christmas cookie recipe out there and for each family as well, this is the one I've been using for years and the one that works for us:

Gingerbread:

325g flour (I do a mix of white and fine spelt, original calls for white all purpose)

100g icing sugar
50g butter
50g honey
2 eggs
½ tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp cocoa powder
Pinch of salt
1 ½ tsp Gingerbread spice (see below)

Basic Gingerbread spice if you don't already have it ready mixed:
1 part of cinnamon
½ part of ginger
½ part of cloves
I would also add pinch of cardamon, nutmeg, and star anise 

Icing:

1 egg white 
180g of sifted icing sugar

few drops of fresh lemon juice

Mix all dry ingredients and add butter - I like mine to be at a very warm room temperature just to make it easier for myself because I'm making dough by hand.

Add honey and eggs and work it all together until everything is mixed into a ball of dough.
It doesn't need to be mixed for long, the dough may even be still a bit sticky from the honey and warm butter, but it will rest in the fridge for at least 24 hours or even more and that will get rid of the stickiness.
Take it out of the fridge a couple of hours before baking so it's not hard as a rock, when you are ready to roll it out.

Dust the surface lightly with flour and roll until 3-5mm thick ,with smaller kids I'd even go for ½ cm so it's easier for them to cut out and pick up the cookies.

Cut the cookies out with whatever you have to hand, cookie cutters, a knife or a glass.

We have an assortment of cutters we have collected over the years and it is a special moment to get them all out for this ocassion.

Place the cut out cookies on a lined baking sheet with about 2cm spacing, they will expand.
Bake in preheated oven at 170C for 10 min(depending on the oven,I bake all cookies at 165C in mine).

If you care about the cookies being shiny, apply egg wash (this can be egg white or whole egg) onto the cookies with a brush right after you take them out of the oven while they are still hot, I do that every time.

After the cookies have fully cooled you can decorate them - or not of course.

I like to use a simple white icing made out of egg whites and icing sugar.

 The basic recipe is: 
1 egg white 
180g of sifted icing sugar

few drops of fresh lemon juice

Whisk the egg whites to form soft peaks. They should be firm but not too stiff. Slowly fold in the sieved icing sugar and the lemon juice. It really depends on the egg you use. I always end up adding more sugar, the consistency must be still runny and sticky, yet stiff. When you take a bit of icing and make a dot on any surface it must hold the shape.
We just use Zip-Loc bags with cut corners, but I've been eyeing special little piping pouches for cookie decorating for years, you can also buy pre-made icing, candy, or sprinkles to decorate with.

I make double or triple batches each year because every year we make a gingerbread cookie Advent calendar. We hang these up and each day one of the kids gets a cookie with the number of that day on it, everyday up until Christmas. 

We also like gifting cookies to friends or making gingerbread houses, so I make lots of gingerbread dough every Christmas.

We always start our Christmas baking with Gingerbread cookies at the end of November which kind of starts our Advent."