Inside the Kitchens at Buckingham Palace: Christmas Ginger Bread Biscuits

Royal Pastry Chefs create thousands of mince pies, sweet treats and canapés for the receptions hosted at the Palace throughout the year – but Christmas time is especially busy. 

One of the favourites are the Christmas Ginger bread biscuits.

Scroll down to the end of the page for the recipe. 

This week, Pastry Chefs showed us how to create the beautiful, and delicious, Christmas biscuits from scratch.

'Its always best to let the dough rest, so it's great if you can make the dough the night before,' reveals one 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.'

Once cut into festive shapes, the biscuits can then be decorated using icing. For an extra special touch, you can even personalise each biscuit.

Once the icing is completely dry, you can loop a ribbon through the biscuits and then hang them on the tree as decorations.

Ginger Bread Biscuits

Makes 10 (50mm Diameter) Cookies

• 200 Grams Self-Raising Flour
• 1 teaspoon of Ground Ginger
• 1 teaspoon of Mixed Spice
• 100 Grams Unsalted Butter
• 75 Grams of Dark Brown soft Sugar
• 25 Grams Granulated Sugar for dusting
• 45 Grams 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 c
• 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.

Want to make more from the Buckingham Palace kitchens this Christmas? Check out our Mince Pie recipe here. 

There's more Royal Recipes from The Royal Household's Head Chef here, A Royal Cookbook: Recipes from Buckingham Palace.