Gingerbread biscuits

Place the butter (120 g), light brown sugar (175 g), and golden syrup (125 g) into a saucepan and place it over low heat until they all melt together. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.

Into a mixing bowl place the flour (375 g), ground ginger (3 tsp), ground cinnamon (½ tsp), mixed spice (½ tsp) and bicarbonate of soda (1 tsp). Whisk together and make a well in the centre. Pour in the butter (120 g)/sugar mixture and crack in the egg (1). Mix it together to form a dough. The dough will be quite sticky but don't worry.

Wrap the dough in cling film or parchment paper and place into the fridge for 1 hour to chill.

Preheat the oven to 170°C Fan.

Place the chilled dough onto a sheet of parchment paper and lightly flour (375 g) the dough and your rolling pin. Roll out to 5mm in thickness. Using a large plate or cake tin as a template, place it onto the dough and cut around it. Remove the excess dough ready to use later. Then place a smaller cake tin or plate into the centre of the round and cut around that. Remove the excess dough from the centre to create a ring. Slide it onto a baking tray ready to bake.

Next, push the rest of the dough together to form a ball and roll it out to 3 to 4mm in thickness. Use any festive cookie cutters of your choice and begin to cut out your gingerbread cookies. I'm using stars and snowflakes for mine. Place onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper leaving a space between each one and bake in the preheated oven for 11 minutes. You may need to cook the wreath ring a little longer. I cooked mine for 14 minutes. Do this in batches if they don't all fit in in one go.

Leave it to cool on the tray for 5 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Make up the icing to your desired thickness by mixing icing sugar with water and food colouring if using. Place into piping bags and decorate the cooled cookies in the most creative ways you can think of.

Next, Make a basic caramel by melting some caster sugar in a saucepan over medium-low heat until melted and golden. This is going to be the glue that will hold everything together. The caramel will be super hot so please be extra careful.

To assemble the gingerbread wreath, carefully place a little caramel onto the back of the cookies and stick them to the wreath ring. The caramel will set quickly so you will need to work quickly. If your caramel does set, simplymake another batch of caramel.