Decorating Gingerbread as Part of a Kid’s Party Activities

Today I have another guest post by Ewan MacDougall who shared some great tips on videoing your child’s birthday party a few weeks ago. This time he not only shares his grandma’s famous gingerbread recipe with us, but have great ideas for using the humble gingerbread men to add a lot of fun to a child’s birthday party.

Over to Ewan…

Many children love getting involved with preparing party food which makes decorating gingerbread men a really great children’s party activity that will fit with almost any theme. One of the biggest advantages of the activity is that the preparation is really flexible depending on how much free time you have.

If you love baking and have lots of free time you can create the gingerbread from scratch in just about any shape you can imagine, but if you’re in a hurry just about everything you need can be bought ready made in most supermarkets’ catering equipment shops.

The activity is fairly straight forward, either buy a box of undecorated gingerbread men, or if you want to be really creative bake your own ones and cut them in a shape relevant to the party theme. You can find cookie cutters in just about any shape either online or at cookery shops. If you have even more time and a steady hand you could try cutting your own shapes with a knife.

Buy a selection of coloured tubes of writing icing, or if you have the time make your own coloured icing and put them in icing bags. For the icing, homemade is not necessarily better, it’s important to have plenty of tubs of icing to go around so none of the children are ever left without, it therefore normally works out cheaper and a lot easier to buy the small ready-made tubes of writing icing, and as these require a lot less washing up too.

This is a messy activity so put down a disposable table cloth or something you don’t mind getting a bit of icing on it. Give each of the children a gingerbread figure and let them have fun creating their own design that they can eat later or take home. As you can imagine this idea can fit many themes, for example if you’re throwing a sports themed party the children can design a player’s sports kit, or recreate their favourite.

If it’s a dinosaur themed party you can create gingerbread dinosaurs to be decorated.

If it’s a princess themed party you could make gingerbread castles.

A superhero, the children can design a superhero costume.

The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

If you have the time making your own gingerbread the day before with your child, it can be a lot of fun and a good way to control any pre birthday excitement. There are countless gingerbread recipes out there but here is one I remember making with my Grandma when I was young. I always used to want to make my gingerbread men look like super heroes. If your children are anything like I was keep an eye on the raw dough, I seem to remember thinking it tasted a lot better raw!

Ingredients:

Gingerbread

200g Flour

75g Butter

¼ tsp of Salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp Baking soda

6 tbs Sugar

1 Egg (beaten)

50ml Orange Juice

400g Bran

4tsp Ground Ginger

1tsp Nutmeg

1 tsp Mixed Spices

Icing:

2 Egg Whites

200g Confectionary sugar (approx.) per colour

Food colouring

Method:

Pre Heat the oven to gas mark 4 (180°C)

Blend the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, bran and spices into the margarine to create a bread crumb like texture. Add the sugar and egg and orange juice to create a dough. Roll the dough out thinly onto a floured surface. Use gingerbread man shaped cutters to cut shapes. Place cookies on a greased baking tray. Cook 20 mins

To create the icing:

Drop 2- 3 drops of food colouring into a bowl
Mix the egg whites then add 2tbs of egg whites to food colouring
Add the sugar
Add 2tsp of hot water
Mix into a paste then pour into icing bag

Repeat process with different colours of food colouring to create different colours of icing.

About the Author:

Ewan Cambell MacDougall now works in Internet marketing with companies such as Total Catering: Catering Equipment UK. Before that however he worked with children in summer camps for a number of years, a field he hopes to return to soon.

Image Source: Creative Baking and Cake Icing with Robertsons – Your Family 1991