Method

• 1. Pre-heat the oven to 200°C and fill a casserole dish with water. Place this dish at the bottom of the oven. WHY? See TIP below. Place a large sheet of greaseproof paper on a large chopping board or surface. Put the kettle on…
• 2. Sift the flour, ginger and bicarb of soda into a large mixing bowl. Meanwhile melt the butter, sugar, syrup and treacle in a saucepan, stirring regularly until thoroughly combined. 3. Add the contents of the saucepan to the dry ingredients in the bowl and – using a large metal spoon – stir continually. The mix should become a wet dough-like consistency. Add just a tablespoon of warm water from the kettle to help the last bits come together. 4. Take out half of the mix. Roll it out on the greaseproof paper to a thickness of about ½ cm (sprinkle a little flour if it gets too sticky; dab a little warm water if it cracks too much). Then, using the ruler, cut away equal sized ‘dominoes’ (place any left-over dough back in a spare bowl to be mixed through and re-used).
• 5. Once you’ve used up approx half the mix and have covered the baking paper with domino shapes (do leave some space for them to expand) then slide the baking paper onto a baking tray and bake for eight minutes. While they’re cooking, get on with creating the next lot from the second batch of the gingerbread mix, in the same way.
• 6. Once baked for eight minutes, check them and then very carefully tidy up the edges of any that look like they could do with ‘sharper’ edges (carefully use a sharp knife) and then place them all back in the oven for an additional two minutes or so until slightly more cooked.
• 7. After that, let them sit on the baking trays to thoroughly cool down. (You can create small cookies etc with any leftover bits of dough – cook these for nearer 5 minutes…)
• 8. When everything has cooled, create your icing by carefully melting the chocolate, in the microwave in short bursts of 20 seconds or so (stir after each blast and remove when it’s almost melted, stirring with a metal spoon to melt it thoroughly out of the microwave). Don’t let the chocolate burn!
• 9. Pour this into your piping bag. Decorate the dominoes with icing dots (place silver dragees on top of each if you wish). Leave to dry for at least one hour.