Olympic Gingerbread Gold Medals

Not long to go now.  The Olympic Clock is counting down the last few days….are we ready?  I’m pretty sure that London isn’t, but I certainly am.  Today in a frenzied couple of hours I made 30(!) Gingerbread Olympic Gold Medals to take to the end of term party at Oscar’s nursery!

Yes I am a bit mad, but I have found an amazing little shop in Brighton which sells all sorts of edible decorations, and the gold glitter was just too irresistible for me. So I had to think of a gold recipe.  When I eventually left the shop with my pot of gold glitter, I had somehow also managed to buy yellow icing, gold lustre spray, little stars and various other beautiful edible goodies!  Oops, got a little carried away.

Not to worry though, because Oscar loves gingerbread and the small fortune spent in that shop, not to mention my hours of slaving away in the kitchen, were all worth it as I watched him scoff his way through several medals after his tea.  He was a little distressed that I had iced them, demanding that I ‘get that icing off there’ (we’re still working on ‘please’), but once he had discovered that it all comes off quite easily in one lump, I was forgiven.

Oscar will be starting a new school in September, so tomorrow we will be saying a sad goodbye to his lovely teachers and little buddies at the Montessori Nursery.  He will really miss them.  For now though, I know we will have a fun party and I just really, really hope that his friends like gingerbread, because there is rather a lot of it coming their way!

This recipe is taken from my Snowy Gingerbread Houses and made 30 gingerbread medals

125g butter, at room temperature

110g soft brown sugar

1 egg yolk

375g plain flour

175g golden syrup

3tsp ground ginger

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 pk yellow ready roll icing

ribbon

gold glitter etc

Heat the oven to 180°C.  Grease a baking sheet.

1. Mix together the butter, sugar and egg yolk until smooth. 

2. Sift in about half of the flour and add about half of the golden syrup.  Mix well to combine then add the rest of the flour and golden syrup along with the bicarbonate of soda and ginger.  Knead it together to form a smooth dough.

3. Roll out the dough between 2 large sheets of baking parchment until it is about ½ cm thick.  Do this in a few batches. 

4. Remove the top sheet of baking parchment, cut out the medals using an 8.5cm round cutter and remove the unwanted dough from in between. The gingerbread will expand a little as it cooks so leave room between each shape. Make a small rectangular hole in the top of each circle using a knife. 

5. Put the whole sheet of baking parchment onto the baking tray (if you can’t fit the whole sheet on just cut around the biscuits and put them on individually). Put the tray into the oven for 10 - 15 minutes or until the gingerbread shapes are light, golden brown.  Remove from the oven, wiggle a knife in the rectangle at the top to open it up as it will have closed up during cooking, then leave to cool.

6. Peel off the baking parchment and decorate the medals however you fancy.  I used all the goodies from my shopping spree.  I rolled out the yellow icing, cut circles slightly smaller than my medals and stuck them on with a little runny icing (icing sugar mixed with a little water), stuck on stars, sprayed them with gold lustre and sprinkled on my lovely glitter.  Thread ribbon through the rectangular hole at the top and tie in a knot at the top and voila – gold medals.

These are easy to make but the decorating can be time consuming.  They definitely get 5/5 from Oscar so this is a gold medal winning recipe.