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Utterly spooktacular gingerbread mummies with the best gingerbread biscuits, fondant icing, royal icing and more…! 

Gingerbread mummies

It’s the season to be scared, so some spooky gingerbread mummies seem like the ideal next bake for me… because lets be honest, don’t they look a little spooktacular?! Oh gosh yes, sorry. Bad joke. 

Anyway! I wanted to post a spooky biscuit bake this year that was actually just a bit of fun! No, they aren’t scary at all – but in reality, no baking is actually spooky or scary, it’s all just delicious and fits the theme. 

Gingerbread

This recipe is based on the original gingerbread people recipe that is on my blog – and I just love it. I love the spices in the cookies, and I think they just bake so easily! Also, there is charm in not having to chill the dough.

Occasionally I get comments saying my gingerbread didn’t work and I chilled the dough – you are not supposed to chill it! This can actually bake the biscuits differently, causing them to balloon slightly or come out of shape. 

Dough

When you make the dough for the gingerbread mummies, you don’t want to over knead it – so if you are using your hands to make the dough, you want to rub the cold unsalted butter into the dry ingredients with just the tips of your fingers. 

Just using the tips of your fingers means you don’t warm the dough up too much, and therefore accidentally melt the butter too much. I do recommend to use actual unsalted butter as well, and not a baking spread! 

Shape and bake

When shaping the dough you can use whatever size cutter you want, but the smaller the cutter the less time they take to bake, and the larger the cutter, the longer they take to bake!

Just keep an eye on the biscuits until they are turning a deeper golden colour and firming up. I find these a perfect texture as they had their shape but are always nice and chewy gingerbread. For those wanting a firm snap, you will need to bake for slightly longer!

Roll out icing

For the decoration of these biscuits I used a combination of royal icing sugar, and roll out icing – I wanted to have options for how they looked! Also, the edible eye sprinkles just gave a hilarious element to it because they look so silly. 

I used a ready made white roll out icing because I’m not normally the biggest fan of roll out icing when it comes to covering cakes – but biscuits its just easy! I used the same size cutter that I used for the biscuits (which will have spread ever so slightly naturally), and stick the fondant onto the biscuits using a little water and a brush. 

You can choose to double the amount of fondant icing if you preferred to make all the biscuits covered, or you can leave this out and just use royal icing instead!! It depends on what your flavour choices are. 

Royal icing

For the royal icing, I’ve gone down the easy route and used ready made royal icing sugar – This is usually in a purple box in the baking aisle, and is different to normal icing sugar! They do not just swap between themselves. 

To make the royal icing sugar, I used 250g royal icing sugar and 35ml of water, beaten together until thick and smooth. This put into a large piping bag with a small petal tip is what I used to make the lines on the biscuits. 

Decoration 

This bit is meant to be a little messy – and you can see mine are not perfect at all, but that’s part of the charm! Mummies are not perfect at all, and decorating them in lines using the petal tip is so fun!

I didn’t decide to completely cover the gingerbread mummies in icing because I wanted to still see the gingerbread underneath, so if you want to completely cover them, or just use royal icing for the cookies and not fondant – double the quantities. 

The edible eye sprinkles can be found in most shops right now – but I bought mine here. I also used this royal icing sugar for the decoration! You just a little of the royal icing to stick the eyes down and you are done! Enjoy! X

Gingerbread Mummies!

Utterly spooktacular gingerbread mummies with the best gingerbread biscuits, fondant icing, royal icing and more...!
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Category: Biscuits
Type: Cookies
Keyword: Gingerbread, Halloween
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes
Servings: 16 Cookies
Author: Jane's Patisserie

Ingredients

Biscuits

  • 375 g plain flour
  • 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 3 tsps ground ginger
  • 120 g unsalted butter (cold & cubed)
  • 175 g light brown soft sugar
  • 5 tbsps golden syrup
  • 1 medium egg

Decoration

  • 250 g ready to roll white icing
  • 250 g royal icing sugar
  • Edible eye sprinkles

Instructions

Biscuits

  • Preheat your oven to 190ºC/180ºC fan and line 3 baking trays with parchment paper.
  • Add the plain flour, bicarbonate of soda, and ground ginger to a large bowl and add the cold, cubed unsalted butter to the bowl.
  • Rub the mixture together with your fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs! (Or mix the four ingredients in a food processor till its breadcrumbs!)
  • Mix the sugar into the mix and combine, and then add the golden syrup and egg - beat with a spatula/your hands until it is a smooth dough.
  • Knead the biscuit dough in the bowl slightly to bring it together and then roll the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface.
  • Roll it out to 1/2cm thickness and cut out your desired shapes - I made 16 'dead' people out of mine.
  • Place them on the lined baking trays and bake in the oven for 10-11 minutes, cool on a wire rack fully.

Decoration

  • Once the biscuits have been cooled fully, you can decorate them.
  • Roll the icing out quite thinly on to a surface dusted with regular icing sugar (not the royal icing sugar).
  • Carefully cut out the same size shapes as the people you made earlier, and stick these to the biscuits using some water brushed on with a pastry brush. I did this on half of the biscuits.
  • In a bowl, add the royal icing sugar.
  • Pour in 20ml of water, and start to beat - you really want to try and mix it in before adding any more water as the mixture needs to be really thick - gradually add more as you go. You do not want to add more than 35 ml of water as it will not work.
  • Once the royal icing sugar is thick and lovely - use a piping bag with a small petal tip to pipe stripes of 'cloth' onto the 'dead' people to make the mummies!
  • I piped more onto the plain biscuits, and only a few strips of cloth onto the mummies with fondant icing on.
  • Add some edible eye sprinkles per biscuit, using the royal icing as glue.

Notes

  • If you want fondant icing on all the biscuits, you made need to double. 
  • If you want to just use royal icing sugar, you will need to double the amount. 
  • You can use any size gingerbread cutter, just keep an eye on the biscuits turning a deeper golden. 
  • These will last for 1+ weeks in an airtight container. 
  • These biscuits can be frozen for 3+ months. 
  • For this bake I used:

ENJOY!

Find my other recipes on my Recipes Page!

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J x

© Jane’s Patisserie. All images & content are copyright protected. Do not use my images without prior permission. If you want to republish this recipe, please re-write the recipe in your own words and credit me, or link back to this post for the recipe.

17 Comments

  1. Jen on December 3, 2023 at 9:34 am

    Can you freeze the uncooked dough?x

  2. Kate on October 27, 2022 at 10:35 pm

    Such an easy recipe and safe to make with children, my daughter loved making these for her halloween party.
    Are they supposed to be slightly soft? I am not sure if they needed to be cooked for a couple of minutes longer but I didnt want to overcook them.

  3. Zara on October 26, 2022 at 8:27 pm

    These look amazing! If I wanted to make these dairy free, which butter alternative would you suggest?

    Thank you!

    • Jane's Patisserie on October 27, 2022 at 3:17 pm

      Hiya! I would use flora plant butter. Hope this helps! x



  4. Lesley on October 23, 2022 at 8:56 pm

    Would these work substituting the egg for something else my son has an allergy?

  5. Emma on October 23, 2022 at 3:23 pm

    5 stars
    My 8yo just made these. Our cutter must be smaller cause we got 16 out of half the mixture. Hoping the rest of the dough will be OK in the fridge for a few days. It’s a good kid friendly mild tasting recipe, the kids aren’t into it as much when recipes add cloves & Treacle etc too.

  6. pauline on December 9, 2021 at 8:54 pm

    Love this idea, yet another variation on the gingerbread man!! I always decorate them upsidedown at Christmas, give them 2 eyes, and a red smartie nose on the “head”, pipe antlers on the legs and hey presto, gingerbread rudolphs….

  7. Amy on November 17, 2021 at 8:05 pm

    These are great!
    Does the fondant keep in the air right container? I’m just worried it’ll sweat??
    Thanks

    • Jane's Patisserie on November 18, 2021 at 1:55 pm

      Hiya! Yes, these will keep absolutely fine in a cake box! Hope this helps x



  8. Katie on November 4, 2021 at 11:04 am

    5 stars
    Used this recipe to make Halloween bats with my daughter as we didn’t have a man shaped cutter, Oh my god they were amazing!!! My daughter ate two, I ate the rest 😂😂 just the perfect gingerbread!

  9. Louise Watson on November 1, 2021 at 10:02 am

    5 stars
    Used this recipe to make some spooky shaped gingerbread for Halloween and it was amazing! so much tastier then the recipe I usually use and I can’t wait to use it again for Christmas. Thanks for coming to my rescue Jane!!

  10. Alicia Dobson on October 26, 2021 at 11:32 am

    I made these yesterday – not usually a fan of gingerbread (was trying to be festive!) so halved the amount of ginger, they are so good! Thank you for another brill recipe!

  11. C Johnson on October 23, 2021 at 1:43 pm

    Hi Jane, could you make these using shortbread.

  12. Clare on October 23, 2021 at 12:59 pm

    Can you use honey instead of golden syrup, as you have the alternative for you flapjacks? Thank you

  13. Helen on October 23, 2021 at 10:57 am

    These look amazing! You are so good at baking, saw you on This Morning the other week, they need to get you on more often!!

    • Jane's Patisserie on October 25, 2021 at 10:51 am

      Ahhh thank you so much!! x



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