DIY Christmas balls made from gingerbread dough will serve as an exquisite interior decoration, fill the house with ginger aroma, and create an indescribable festive atmosphere. Sweet painted gingerbread cookies with glaze, hanging on an elegant Christmas tree and concealing pleasant surprises inside, will surely please both children and adults.
Making and painting gingerbread Christmas balls is a very exciting and creative activity that children will be happy to join. And after the holiday, having admired enough home-made Christmas tree decorations, you can always enjoy them and find cute little gifts inside each ball.
Making ginger dough
A feature of the dough for making Christmas balls is its high elasticity and firmness. The best dough is obtained on a honey basis: add 3 tsp to 150 g of liquid honey. ginger powder, 3 tsp. ground cinnamon and 2 tsp. ground cloves and heat with occasional stirring.
Add 250 g of good butter to warm honey and stir until a homogeneous mixture is formed. Beat 3 eggs with 350 g of sugar, combine with the cooled honey mass, and then gradually add 6 tbsp. sifted flour and 1. tsp. baking powder. The dough is thoroughly kneaded and sent to the refrigerator for several hours.
Making a mold for Christmas balls
If you do not have ready-made baking dishes for bulky culinary products at hand, you can use household foil: tearing off small pieces from the roll, roll a ball of the desired size. It is important to remember that the finished product will be about 2-3 cm larger in diameter than the existing workpiece.
To make the shape smooth, the ball is wrapped again with a sheet of foil and all the irregularities are smoothed out. From the remaining "tail" at the bottom of the workpiece, a stand is formed on which the future gingerbread ball will be located.
Harvesting gingerbread rings
In order for the New Year's ball to be hung on the tree, it is necessary to provide a fastener for the ribbon. To do this, take out the dough from the refrigerator, let it warm up a little at room temperature, after which a small piece is cut off and rolled out about 5-7 mm thick.
Small rings are cut out of the rolled dough with a hole in the center through which a ribbon or braid will be threaded. The diameter of the rings can be any, because they will not be in sight, but inside the gingerbread ball. The blanks are baked for about 5 minutes in the oven at 180 degrees.
Making gingerbread balls
The finished Christmas balls will be formed from two hemispheres. To do this, roll out the dough thinly, cover the foil ball with this layer, gently smooth it so that all the folds of the dough are gathered below the middle part of the ball.
To get rid of the folds, you will need ordinary sewing threads - placing the thread strictly along the center line of the ball, cross its ends and remove the cut off excess dough. Only a hemisphere of dough should remain on the foil mold.
The workpieces made in this way are baked for 15-20 minutes in the oven at a temperature of 180 degrees, after which they are carefully removed from the mold, trying not to burn themselves on the hot foil and not to break the fragile gingerbread dough. It is important to remember that when it cools, the dough quickly hardens and it becomes more difficult to remove it from the mold without damaging it.
If the baked hemispheres have uneven edges, you can smooth them out using a fine-perforated grater. To form a ball, workpieces are selected that coincide as much as possible with each other along the center line.
Covering a gingerbread ball with icing
To make the glaze, beat two egg whites, a few drops of lemon juice and 300 g of powdered sugar until maximum thickness. Any food coloring can be added to the glaze, if desired. Each half of the ball is carefully dipped in the glaze, the excess is removed with the tip of a knife and left to solidify.
It is best to place the blanks on a grate that allows drops of glaze to drain, but if the grate is not at hand, then it is necessary from time to time to move the gingerbread hemispheres a little from place to place with a long skewer or toothpick - this will allow them not to stick to the table surface. The remaining glaze is placed in a culinary bag and put into the refrigerator for further use in decorating Christmas balls.
When the glaze dries, using fine sandpaper, gently smooth the edges of the balls and start decorating them. Christmas decorations are painted with food paint in the desired style - these can be Christmas stories, traditional Russian ornaments, New Year's themes, abstraction, etc.
Assembling New Year's Gingerbread Balls
After the paint has dried, proceed to the final assembly of the Christmas balls. A ribbon is threaded through the gingerbread ring prepared in advance, folded in a loop and tied in a knot, after which the ring is put inside the hemisphere. You can also put any surprises there: sweets, notes with congratulations and wishes, small toys.
The edge of the hemisphere is carefully covered with a thin layer of glaze, placed in a pastry bag, after which the workpiece is covered with the second half of the ball and gently pressed against each other. The remaining cracks and holes are leveled with glaze and left to solidify.
The seam remaining after gluing the halves is masked with decorative edible elements or glaze residues, drawing a beautiful ornament at the junction of the hemispheres. Christmas balls are decorated with bows and are used to decorate a festive tree or interior decor.
