Slovene Cuisine #8: Christmas Cookies!

This week, my son’s teacher sent us a recipe for Christmas honey biscuits which I thought would make a nice (if a little messy) activity over the weekend. I was not wrong. This is a fun and easy recipe to make with children, but be warned – things could get messy…

Ingredients

I’ve called the recipe ‘Christmas Gingerbread’ here as that’s how Google translated medenjaki, the Slovenian name for these cookies, but the med- part means ‘honey’, and you don’t have to add ginger at all. As I like gingerbread, I ended up using a gingerbread spice mix which I got in the supermarket instead of mixed spice. It’s really up to you!

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180°C (Fan 160 °C, gas mark 4)
• Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl and stir to combine into a smooth and sticky dough.
• Cover the dough with cling film and leave to chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
• Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface (you’ll probably need to flour your hands as well) and knead lightly.
• Roll the dough out to 0.5cm thick. Use festive cookie cutters to cut out fun shapes such as stars, Christmas trees and gingerbread men.
• Bake in the preheated oven for 12-15 minutes, depending how crispy you like your cookies!

The fun part!

Now it’s time to decorate your cookies. Once they’ve cooled a little, you can simply dust them with sifted icing sugar using a dredger or sieve, or make glacé icing then decorate with coloured icing, coloured sprinkles or whatever takes your fancy (see featured image). I made lemon glacé icing, by mixing freshly squeezed lemon juice with sifted icing sugar to form a smooth but spreadable paste. I reckon about 200g icing sugar is enough to cover half of the biscuits, though I didn’t measure.

Here are some more pictures of the family fun event that was Christmas Bake Day:

If you enjoyed this post, you can visit my Instagram page for more images from Christmas Bake Day, and stay tuned for more Slovene Cuisine…

Dober tek!
Ingrid