Gingerbread Biscuits

• In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and dark brown sugar until smooth and creamy. Scrape down the sides as needed.
• Add in black treacle/molasses and vanilla, and crack in an egg as well. Beat the mixture together for 2 minutes until smooth.
• In another bowl, whisk together plain flour, baking soda, ground cinnamon, ground ginger, all spice and ground cloves, along with a pinch of salt. Add this mixture to the wet ingredients and combine till a dough comes together. The dough will be a bit sticky, that's okay, just dust some flour in your hands and bring the dough together into a disk shape and wrap it in cling film and refrigerate for 1 hour.
• Preheat the oven to 170 C. And line baking trays with parchment paper.
• Dust the worktop with flour. Roll out the dough to about 1/4th of an inch and using a cookie cutter, cut out your desired shapes. Place the cut out shapes an inch apart from each other on the baking tray. Re-roll the scraps and repeat the process again to cut out the shapes.
• Bake the biscuits for 10-11 minutes. Allow the biscuits to cool on the tray for 2 minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.

For the royal icing

• Whisk together icing sugar and egg whites. Add in water one tablespoon at a time till you get a smooth and flowy consistency to pipe. If you want to add food colouring, then divide the icing to different containers and add it at this stage.
• Transfer the mixture into piping bags and snip off a tiny bit at the end. Decorate the gingerbread biscuits as desired.