Christmas Gingerbread Cookies

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It's great to enjoy yourself and loved ones with a cup of tea with aromatic honey gingerbread on a cold winter evening! And the main thing in these gingerbread cookies is only natural useful dyes!

You will like to make honey gingerbreads not only for you, but also for your children. After all, it’s so fun together to mold balls for edible Christmas trees from mastic! And most importantly in these gingerbread cookies - natural healthy dyes! I want to share with you just that.
But let's start withtest, it is choux:
2 eggs;
1 cup of sugar;
40 gr butter;
2.5 cups flour;
1 tsp soda;
1 tbsp honey;
cinnamon (you can add other spices, for example, cardamom, nutmeg, coriander)
1. In eggs, beat eggs, add sugar and beat.

2. Melt the butter, pour in the eggs, add soda and spices.

3. Put in a water bath, pour 1 tbsp. flour and stirring vigorously, bring to a boil.

4. Pour the remaining flour on the table with a slide. Make a depression in the middle and pour the contents of the pan into it.

5. Knead the dough until it sticks, but not too steep.

6. Now we will prepare stencils for future gingerbread cookies (can be done in advance). On a piece of paper you can draw a Christmas tree, a snowman, a gingerbread man, a bunny or a bear. It’s better not to make the figures very small. Cut with scissors. The stencil is ready!

7. Divide the dough into three parts. Roll out each thinly.do this while the dough is still warm. Lean the stencil against the dough and circle with a knife. So cut the figures from the whole dough.

8. Place the figures on a dry baking sheet. Put in an oven preheated to 190 - 200 degrees. bake for about 7 minutes until browning.

Now we are going to prepare multi-colored mastic. We will need:
marshmallows;
icing sugar (a lot);
1 tsp butter;
15 ml of milk;
vinegar or lemon juice (a little).
To add color: green - I use frozen spinach, pink - black currants or cherries, lilac - blueberries, yellow - turmeric powder, brown - a small slice of dark chocolate.
So, in detail I will consider only the creation of green, the rest of the colors are obtained in the same way. We use spinach for green, as it does not change the brightness during heat treatment. Depending on in what proportion to put it, we get a green color of different intensity.
1. Boil spinach for 5 minutes in a small amount of water. Rub through a sieve, if you do a lot, you can grind with a blender.

2. put in a bowl of spinach 2-3 pcs of marshmallows, pour a little milk, a little butter, a few drops of vinegar or lemon juice and put in the microwave for 30-50 seconds until the increase in volume.

3. Now we begin to gradually introduce powdered sugar and mix constantly. Bring to the consistency of plastic dough. depending on the amount of marshmallows and dye, different amounts of powder may be needed. I always have in stock at least 500g for 6 marshmallows.

4.Immediately wrap the finished mastic in a plastic wrap or bag so that it does not dry

Now you can proceed to the design of gingerbread. I will use honey to stick the mastic with the gingerbread, but you can use your favorite jam or butter cream.
Lubricate the surface of the gingerbread with honey or jam. Thin the mastic of the chosen color using a rolling pin, sprinkle the table with icing sugar. As well as the dough, with the help of stencils, cut out the necessary shapes and carefully place them on the gingerbread cookies, carefully trim and press.

Then children and even my husband joined me!) They molded colored balls, turned them into cakes, some managed to eat half ...
Glue all balls and details to honey or jam.

The rest of the mastic can be stored tightly wrapped in a film in the refrigerator. The photo shows pale Christmas trees - this is a mastic that we specially prepared for gingerbread, so that the Christmas trees were powdered, and the dark Christmas tree, mastic from the previous cooking. Here is an example of bright green mastic