Traditional Polish Christmas Gingerbread

Before I started blogging, I would never have thought about making a gingerbread dough or any dough and leaving it for 2 months in a fridge. Well, that sounds scary, doesn’t it? I kind of know what am I doing now just by a simple fact, I tried a similar recipe for maturing gingerbread cookies 2 years ago, it wasn’t exactly the same recipe, but the idea was the same. It turned out nice.

So this year I’m making maturing gingerbread, and I hope it will turn out nicely. Otherwise, it will be kind of annoying not to have an epilogue to this post, won’t it?

If you want to join me in making this cake, you need to start your dough as soon as possible as it needs to sit in the fridge for next 6 weeks.

• Difficulty: medium
• Print

Recipe from Moje Wypieki

Ingredients

• 250g honey
• 3/4 cup caster sugar
• 125g butter
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 cup cold milk
• 500g plain flour sifted
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 40g gingerbread spice mix (try to use one that doesn’t have cocoa or flour)
• 200g jar plum jam, for a spread

Directions

Mix honey, sugar, and butter in a saucepan, until the mixture will start to simmer and sugar will dissolve entirely.

Let it cool.

Dissolve the baking soda in milk.

Add flour, milk and baking soda mixture, eggs, salt and gingerbread spice mix.

Knead the dough until smooth. It will be quite sticky at this point.

Place the dough into a glass container, cover with tea towel and store in a fridge for 5-6 weeks (only 2 weeks will do as well).

5-6 days before Christmas

Divide the dough into 3 equal parts and roll it out into even rectangles about 0.5cm thick.(you may need to leave it first in room temperature for an hour, as the dough hardens during maturing and maybe a little bit difficult to handle).

Preheat the oven to 170ºC/160ºC fan.

Bake for 15-20 minutes.

Leave it to cool.

Place the first gingerbread layer and cover it with the half of the plum jam. Place the second layer and cover it with the remaining jam. Place the last layer at the top.

Wrap it with parchment paper, put something heavy on the top like a wooden cutting board and leave for 3-4 days to allow flavors to mature.

Cover the cake with icing or chocolate ganache.