Ninjabread men!

I had a fun Sunday last weekend. Having been on a ridiculously long walk mostly up hills on Saturday, we had definitely earned a more relaxing day on Sunday so, instead of doing something super active or cultural, we decided to make gingerbread men. Sorry, not gingerbread but NINJABREAD! How awesome is that for an idea? It was more of a mission than I originally suspected as some of the icing was kind of fiddly, and gingerbread has a bit of a tendency to misbehave when you cut it. But... what do you think? How cool are these little guys?

Hai-Ja! Ninjas are on the loose...

We even made some ghost ninjas!

On Monday I showed the kids in my class some of the photos we'd taken of the ninjabread. Obviously they were clearly impressed, cries of 'Yaaaaarrrr, sick Miss!' came from all sides. My class have been doing their SATS tests this week (that is something different in the UK to what it is in the US by the way) and have been working flat out. So today I decided to give them a treat... I stayed up till ridiculously late last night making ninjabread shapes and took in lots of bits to decorate them with. The results were awesome! Clearly children are way more imaginative than us adults - there were all sorts of varieties and I thought they all looked brilliant. What do you think? 

I have just discovered that gingerbread is remarkably easy to make - there are loads of recipes on the internet but here's the one that I have been using. 

Ingredients:

350g plain flour

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

100g butter

175g soft, light brown sugar

1 egg

4 tablespoons golden syrup

What to do: 

1) Preheat your oven to 190°C / Gas mark 5 and line some baking trays with baking paper (baking parchment)

2) Sift the flour, ginger and bicarbonate into a large bowl. 

3)Rub in the butter with your fingertips.

4) Add the sugar, then stir in the syrup and the egg until it makes a firm dough.

5) Roll out your ninja dough onto a floured surface - beware it likes to stick so it needs to be very well floured! Roll to about 5mm thick and then use your cookie cutters to cut your shapes.

6) Carefully lift your gingerbread and place them onto your baking trays - leave big spaces between them as they do spread a bit.

7) Bake them for about 10 - 15 minutes or until golden. Leave them on the tray for about 10 minutes till they firm up and then transfer to a wire rack.

8) When they are cool, you can accessorise your ninjas as you see fit... a more traditional headband and belt or something a bit more wacky...