Imagine having a team of pastry chefs at your beck and call in your very own kitchen, ready to create any tasty treats you want, at any time of the day.
That’s exactly what life is like for the royal family. Their royal pastry chefs create thousands of mince pies, sweet treats and canapés for the receptions hosted at Buckingham Palace throughout the year, but Christmas time is especially busy.
One of their most popular recipes are the Christmas gingerbread biscuits – and we’ve got our hands on the original.
This week the Buckingham Palace chefs showed us how to create the beautiful, and delicious, Christmas biscuits from scratch.
You can cut the cookies into any shape you like. (Image: Buckingham Palace)
The royal chefs sketch out their designs beforehand. (Image: Buckingham Palace)
“It’s always best to let the dough rest, so it’s great if you can make the dough the night before,” revealed one of the royal pastry chefs.
“You can also roll out the dough, cut the shapes and put them in a freezer for an hour. This ensures they keep their shape nicely.”
The biscuits can then be decorated with icing – you can even personalise them with your loved one’s name.
Once the icing is completely dry, you can loop a ribbon through the biscuits and then hang them on the tree as decorations.
Keep scrolling to read the full recipe below …
One of the royal chefs at work in the kitchen. (Image: Buckingham Palace)
Use a piping bag to draw on the icing. (Image: Buckingham Palace)
They’re so pretty! (Image: Buckingham Palace)
Ginger Bread Biscuits: Makes 10 (50mm diameter) cookies
Ingredients
200g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon of ground ginger
1 teaspoon of mixed spice
100g unsalted butter
75g of dark brown soft sugar
25g granulated sugar for dusting
45g milk
Icing to decorate
Method
Sift together the flour and spices, add the diced butter and crumb together with your fingertips.
Add the milk to form a paste. Wrap in film and allow to rest for minimum 2 hours (best left over night)
Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees
Roll out to approximately 3mm (but depends on the size of the cookie you wish to make), cut shapes out and lay on to greaseproof paper or silicon mat sprinkle with a little granulated sugar before baking at 180 degrees until set.
Allow to cool fully on a cooling rack before icing with your choice of design.
