Ingredients for the dough:

• 0,5 kg of plain flour,
• 0.25 kg of sugar,
• 2 eggs,
• 2 tablespoons of honey,
• 1 tablespoon of rum,
• gingerbread spices,
• lemon peel,
• half a teaspoon of baking soda.

Gingerbread spices

Spice is an important ingredient of gingerbread and gingerbread sweets. Either we use gingerbread powders, which in addition to the baking powder includes also a part of the spice, or we can mix the spice mixture ourselves. In this case, we will use mainly cinnamon, a little less cloves, a pinch of new spices, vanilla, but also star anise, anise or fennel. From other flavors add lemon peel.

Ratio of gingerbread spices to 1 kg of flour:

• 0.5 dkg of cinnamon,
• 0.5 dkg of clove spice,
• 0.5 dkg of allspice,
• 1 pc vanilla,
• 1 dkg star anise,
• 1 dkg anise.

Egg white icing

• 0.2 kg of powdered sugar,
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice (instead of lemon juice we can dissolve a pinch of citric acid in a tablespoon of water),
• 2 egg whites.

Put sugar, egg whites and lemon juice in a cup and stir thoroughly until the icing thickens and is smooth. This icing can also be processed in other ways (by friction). Decorate the figurines with the finished icing.

Procedure

Dry ingredients, i. e. sugar and flour (separate a small part of flour for further use), sift on a roller or in a bowl. Heat the honey in a steam bath and add eggs and rum to the cooling honey and whisk to a thick cream. If we want the gingerbread to be darker, we can add 2 tablespoons of cocoa to the dough. With lukewarm cream, we then make the prepared flour with other ingredients and add lemon peel. Add gingerbread spices and leavening agents until finally with  a little flour, in which we sifted them. For small gingerbread cookies and figurines prepare a firm dough.

The prepared dough must rest - thick dough overnight or even longer. If the dough hardens too much in the cold overnight, let it warm up to room temperature. We also warm up small residues so that they can be processed. Roll out the aged dough into a thicker pancake, from which we cut out the figures.

Gingerbread baking trays must be wiped with grease in advance (do not sprinkle). Brush the surface of the pieces with egg, otherwise the dry surface will crack after baking. Before putting the gingerbread into the oven, we must preheat it well beforehand (to about 180 ° C). After a few minutes of baking lower the temperature and bake at uniform medium temperature (about 150°C) into a slight darkening. The total baking time is around 8 - 10 minutes. Decorate the cooled figurines with prepared icing.

It is best to store the finished gingerbread in boxes in a humid place so that it does not dry out too much. Gingerbread, which is hard immediately after baking, gets wet over time and gains in fragility. That is why we bake small gingerbread cookies and gingerbread sweets in advance and eat them only after they have softened in a few weeks.

Note: We assume that we will produce 50 pieces of figures from the stated amount of dough. The amount of spices specified in the recipe corresponds to 1 kg of flour. Because the dough is made from0.5 kg of flour, we must then mix half the amount of spices into the dough.

The following diagram shows the breaking-up from the finished gingerbread through the semi-finished products to the initial inputs. The finished product and semi-finished products are in a frame, the inputs are framed by an oval. The possibility of substitution is indicated by the underlying rectangle. Raw materials that serve as a substitute or supplement are listed in italics.