Place the butter, sugar and treacle in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until the butter melts and the sugar dissolves. Set aside for 10 minutes to cool slightly.

Combine the butter mixture and egg in a large bowl. Sift the combined flour, ginger, cinnamon, cloves and bicarbonate of soda over the butter mixture. Stir until well combined. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and gently knead until smooth. Shape into a disc. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 1 hour to rest.

Preheat oven to 180°C. Line 2 baking trays with non-stick baking paper. Divide the dough into 2 even portions. Roll out 1 portion on a lightly floured surface until 5mm thick. Use a 12.5cm-long Christmas tree-shaped cutter to cut trees from the dough. Place on the lined trays. Bake for 5 minutes or until golden. Set aside on the trays for 5 minutes to cool before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat with remaining dough.

Place the egg whites in a bowl. Use a wooden spoon to lightly beat the egg whites until foamy. Sift icing sugar over the egg whites and stir until smooth. Add lemon juice and stir until well combined. Divide icing between a piping bag fitted with a 4mm plain nozzle and a piping bag fitted with a 4mm fluted nozzle, and pipe onto the biscuits to decorate. Set aside for 1 hour to set. Serve.

I’m a bit of a seasoned expert when it comes to this recipe. if you keep the dough to about 5mm when you roll it out you will get fabulously fat, chubby gingerbreads. This recipe does not go hard, it makes a soft, moreish biscuit. What you see photographed was about half of the dough, I kept the rest in the fridge for a few days and then baked it up later in the week for when we went camping. Nothing beats a home made biscuit at the end of a big walk or a day at the beach.

I brought the alphabet shaped cutters at Harris Scarf in the Christmas sales. They look a bit like this. I like to roll the dough out in smaller batches as I don’t have a lot of bench space.

To make the decoration, I no longer follow the recipe to make the icing, As it produces about 4 times what you need. I simply take one egg white, the juice of a lemon to taste and then add icing sugar until I get the right consistency. Once you get to this stage, I then split it into how ever many colours I am doing and then use food dye to colour them accordingly. There are some great colours available from Baking Pleasures, and they have gel’s which I find much easier to use that liquid ones (no slips!)

The birthday girl and her Mummy enjoying all of the lovely sweet things that were made for her on her 1st Birthday. The cake in the centre complete with chocolate butterflies was put together by Indy’s Mummy and Daddy and the cupcakes were made by her Nanna Pam and Aunty Anita.

So I guess the great outdoors aren’t so bad after all? Although at the end of this day we lost a soccer ball to a tree and I got got bitten by about a million mozzies. But it’s all in good fun!