As I stood in my kitchen last Friday, whistling a merry tune and going to town on my gingerbread with a gazillion cookie cutters calling out to be used, an idea struck. OK, so I don't have a gazillion cookie cutters, but I do have rather a lot. My miniature alphabet ones were shouting the loudest, practically begging to be used so they were. Edible place settings would be perfect for my Christmas table, I thought, and what would be better than a personalised gingerbread cookie for our guests to take home to enjoy. Lilly Higgins made some beautiful Christmas card cookies for the Christmas edition of Easy Food magazine and so I took my inspiration from her.
The recipe for the dough is the same one that used for my gingerbread cookies and you can find it here. Follow the instructions as far as step 5 and I will give the rest of the details below. Enjoy!
Once the dough has chilled remove it from the fridge and roll to a thickness of 5mm.
Cut rectangles using a sharp knife. I cut mine 100mm x 60mm but you can cut them to size according to the length of names.
Place on the lined baking sheets and bake in the preheated oven for 12-15 minutes.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes before moving to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.
While the cookies are baking roll out some fondant icing to a thickness of 2-3mm. Using miniature alphabet cookie cutters cut out the letters required for the names of your guests. Place the letters on greaseproof paper(don't make too far in advance as they will dry out and may crack as you position them on the cookies). You can also cut out a miniature Christmas shape if you wish. If you would like to use coloured fondant make a thumb print in the fondant and add a couple of drops of food colouring, knead until the icing is evenly coloured. Refrigerate for a few minutes if you need to, it may warm up from being handled. Don't worry if you don't have alphabet cookie cutters I will give another option below.
Mix up some icing (175g/6oz icing sugar sifted into a bowl, add 1.5teaspoons of warm water and mix to a smooth paste. Adjust the consistency with additional icing sugar or water if needed by adding a little at a time). Add a couple of drops of a food colouring of your choice or leave white if you wish.
Using a teaspoon, place some icing onto the cookies a teaspoon full at a time, and spread evenly until the top of the cookie is evenly covered.
Position the letters on each cookie to make up the names of all of your guests and add a Christmas shape at the end if you wish.
Alternatively allow the icing to dry and use icing writing pens(these can be purchased in packs in most supermarkets) and write your guests name freehand on each cookie.
