When I was a kid my favourite biscuit was a gingerbread man. When I grew up I tried loads of different recipes to make my own ginger biscuits, but they were always too hard or too soft or too sweet or not gingery enough.

At last I found a fantastic recipe for ginger biscuits that works perfectly every time and makes the BEST biscuits you’ve ever tasted! And today I’m going to share it with you.

Here is what you need:

Ingredients

350 g / 12 oz self-raising flour

200 g / 7 oz brown sugar

125 g / 4 1/2 oz butter

1 tablespoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

a pinch of salt

75 g / 2 3/4 oz honey

1 egg

This is what you do:

Put the flour, sugar, salt, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger into a big mixing bowl. Stir them all up until they are completely mixed. Squish any lumps of sugar you find so they mix in properly.

In a regular china bowl, chop the butter into slices (to make it melt faster) and put them in the microwave on DEFROST or LOW for about 20 seconds. When the butter is half melted, take it out and stir the unmelted bits in until it’s all runny but not too hot.

Crack open the egg into a small bowl and mix it up until it’s all smooth. Add the egg to the melted butter, stirring gently. Then add the honey to this mixture and stir again.

Add the gooey egg-honey-butter mixture to the dry stuff in the big bowl. Stir it all together with a big wooden spoon (this takes some doing) and if it’s a wee bit dry still, sprinkle a tablespoon of water over it and stir some more.

Take a soup spoon and dig out a big spoonful of the mixture. Roll it into a ball (make sure your hands are clean first!) and press it down on a non-stick baking tray. Do this lots and lots of times until the baking tray is full. (You need to leave a bit of space between them because they expand to about twice their size.) I make my biscuits quite big so I get about 11 on one baking tray.

While one batch is baking (for about 15 minutes at 160C / 325F / Gas Mark 3) I roll more little balls and flatten them out on another baking tray. At the size I make them, this recipe gives me about 24 biscuits altogether.

If you watch them bake, the biscuits puff up at first and look quite pale. Then slowly they flatten down again. They are perfectly done when they are flat and a lovely golden colour. The longer you leave them, the crunchier they get – but don’t burn them! What a terrible waste that would be!

My children love these biscuits any time of day, and especially in their lunch boxes. I hope you like them too!