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1
Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper/baking parchment
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2
Cream the butter and sugar together until light
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3
Add the syrup and mix in
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4
Mix the flour, baking powder and spices together and add to the mixture.
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5
Form a dough adding more syrup if required to bring it together
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6
Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for half an hour
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7
Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 5/ 190C.
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8
Flour your surface then roll out your dough so it's 1cm thick and cut out your men with a gingerbread men shaped cutter or whatever shape you want to use.
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9
You get neat stamps you can press on instead of decorating with icing like those pictured above
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10
Place on baking tray and bake for 10 minutes - they should be firm but not browned
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11
Rest on tray a further 10 minutes then remove and set on a wire rack to continue cooling
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12
Decorate with piped icing.
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13
Let your imagination guide you.
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14
You could stick sweets to the icing for eyes or buttons!
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15
Hint: For Halloween make some headless, armless or legless by cutting off a leg or whatever and decorate with red icing near the 'injury', scary faces and pipe a skeleton out of icing onto the bodies.
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16
My son loves this!
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17
To make Xmas Stained Glass Cookies, follow the recipe but cut circles out of your main cookie shapes
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18
Bash some boiled sweets or lollipops with a rolling pin to breal them into smaller pieces and spoon into the holes in your cookies
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19
Poke a hole near the top of each cookie so when its baked you can thread a ribbon through and hang on your xmas tree or in front of your window
