Shrek: Gingy The Gingerbread Man Recipe

Welcome to my food series “From The Film’ where I recreate recipes from some of my favourite films.

It’s that time of year, Christmas is coming so I thought what better way to start the series off than with a gingerbread recipe, specifically Gingy from Shrek. I wasn’t a huge fan of gingerbread cookies before, however after testing different quantities of spices and different bake times I think I have finally found a recipe I like. The spices in the cookies aren’t super overpowering and the gingerbread has a nice soft crunch.

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Who Is Gingy?

Gingy Is a gingerbread man, based on the fairytale character The Gingerbread Man. He has white eyes, light blue eyebrows, a red mouth and 2 purple gum drop buttons. In the first Shrek movie, ‘Lord Farguaad’ broke Gingy’s legs. To reattach his legs he has four lines of white frosting on each leg. Throughout the film, Gingy’s favourite part about himself is his gumdrop buttons, quote “Not my gumdrop buttons”.

Making the Gingerbread

To make the gingerbread dough start by adding the light brown sugar and butter to a large bowl and cream together using a wooden spoon or electric hand whisk if you prefer. Just until the butter and sugar cream together, you don’t need to make the butter light and fluffy like the method used when making a cake.

The next step is to add the wet ingredients. Add in the golden syrup and egg, then mix until combined. The mixture may look a little split at first, but if you continue to mix it will become nice and smooth it can sometimes take a while so don’t panic.

Once the mixture is nice and smooth it is time to add in the dry ingredients. Add in the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger and a tiny pinch of nutmeg (because it’s quite strong). Then stir until the ingredients are all mixed in, it should start to form a dough.

That is pretty much it for the dough, however, it is now time to rest the dough in the fridge for about 40-50minutes. This will help the gluten in the dough relax, but also chill the dough making the dough a lot easier to work with later on. 

Tips 

If you find your dough a little sticky and difficult to work with, try adding a little bit of plain flour (all-purpose) at a time, and kneading the dough until you can roll it into a nice ball.

Before placing the dough in the fridge to rest, I’d recommend pressing the dough a little into a flat circle, this will make the dough so much easier to roll out, but also the dough will chill a little quicker.

Rolling out and Cutting the Dough

Once the dough has firmed up in the fridge it is time to roll out the dough. Start by preparing your surface with a light dusting of flour, this will prevent your dough from sticking. I also like to sprinkle a little extra flour on the dough to stop it from sticking to the rolling pin. 

Roll out the dough to about 4mm in thickness. Then using your Gingy-shaped cookie cutter cut out as many gingerbread men as you can. Once you have cut out as many as you can re-roll the remaining dough until you have used up all of the dough. 

Place each gingerbread man on a large baking tray lined with parchment paper (greaseproof paper) making sure to leave a gap in between each one so that they don’t stick together. 

Tip

To prevent the dough from sticking to the cookie cutter dunk the bottom of the cookie cutter into a little bit of flour.

If you don’t have a gingerbread man cookie cutter you can use any other cutters you like or create a template instead.

Baking the Gingerbread Men

Make sure your oven is preheated to 170C Fan. They will bake for around 8-10 minutes until the edges are slightly brown.

Once they have baked allow too cool slightly before transferring them to a cooling rack. Then allow cooling completely before decorating.

Decorating

When decorating I wanted to recreate the classic Gingy design. For most of the design, I used royal Icing. 

To make the royal Icing I added the meringue powder and Icing sugar (powdered sugar/confectioners sugar) to a bowl and add a few tablespoons of cold water adding a small amount at a time until a pipeable consistency form.

Tip

• It’s always better to add a small amount of water at a time because you can easily fix the consistency, whereas if you add too much water it can become a little more complicated when trying to fix the consistency so keep that in mind.

When you aren’t using the royal icing I’d recommend covering it with cling film to prevent the icing from drying out in the bowl.

Next, I coloured the royal icing using my ProGel food colouring paste, any food colouring paste will work just avoid using liquid food colour as this will affect the consistency of the icing. I used red and light blue food colouring paste and left the remaining white, then add them to piping bags with a Wilton no.2 round piping tip.

Gingy has 2 gumdrops for his buttons. I am aware they are an important feature to him however I couldn’t find any purple gumdrops suitable for vegetarians that we're small enough. So I decided to use mini smarties instead.

The great part about this recipe is that the designs for decorating are endless, so feel free to decorate the cookies however you prefer. 

Storing Gingerbread

The gingerbread can be stored in an airtight container for up to a week, with or without the decorations. If you have decorated the gingerbread, allow the icing to dry before packing it away in a container. To prevent the icing from transferring you can use parchment paper between each layer, this will also prevent any delicate decorations from becoming damaged.

Recommend Equipment/Ingredients:

To make these stunning gingerbread men I used the following equipment.

• Gingerbread Cookie Cutter
• Measuring Scales
• Large Bowl
• Golden Syrup
• Rolling Pin
• Parchment Paper
• ProGel Food Colouring Paste
• Piping Bags
• Wilton No.2 Round Piping Tip
• Measuring Spoons