These little gingerbread men hide an unexpected flavour... they are made using anise seed.
Prep Time30 minutesmins
Cook Time30 minutesmins
Resting Time2 hourshrs
Total Time3 hourshrs
Course: Sweets, Tea Time
Cuisine: Vegetarian
Servings: 75pieces
Equipment
Baking sheet and baking parchment
Oven
Ingredients
300gwheat flourplus extra to dust the workspace
100gicing sugar
200gcold butterin small cubes
1eggmedium sized
3tspanise seeds
1tspground anise seed
Instructions
Roast the anise seeds in a dry pan. Leave to cool down and crush using a pestle and mortar.
Put crushed anise seeds, ground anise seed, flour, icing sugar, butter and egg in a bowl and knead into a smooth dough (using a mixer with dough hooks)
Wrap the dough in cling film and leave to cool in the fridge for 2 hours
Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan and line a baking tray with baking parchment
Divide the dough into 3 or 4 parts. Dust your workspace with flour and roll out one part of the dough to a thickness of 5 mm (keeping the rest of the dough in the fridge). Use any cutter you like to cut out the cookies
Arrange the cookies on the baking tray, leaving a little space between them. Bake them in the oven for about 8 minutes. Leave to cool on a wire rack
Notes
You can use any cookie cutter that you like. I have used a little gingerbread man cutter. The amount of cookies that you can make depends on the size of your cookie cutter.Once completely cooled, you can store your cookies in an airtight container for about 2-3 weeks. The anise flavour will become a little more intense after storing the cookies.