I've based my recipie on CupcakeJemma's, I don't have enough confidence in myself to make my own recipies yet. So, let's get started! First I like to set all my ingredients and quantities together in order to not get confused while doing the actual baking so: 

For the cookies

You will need

• 2 1/2 cups of plain flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground pepper
• Ground ginger, cinnamon and cloves (the quantity is really up to you, I had 1/2 tsp of each but it just depends on how spiced you want your cookies, I wouldn't do more than a teaspoon). 
• 100 grams of unsalted butter (most butters have the grams in the packaging so you can measure it!) 
• 1/2 tsp of baking powder with a pinch of salt
• 2/3 of a cup of brown sugar
• 4 tbsp syrup
• 2 medium to large eggs

Time to get baking! 

1. Get your food processor (If you don't have one you'll be okay with an electric whisk, just make sure to be paying attention to the process of the dough) and put in your dry ingredients: flour, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, baking powder, salt and brown sugar and mix until combined - it takes about 10 seconds -. 
2. Throw in the unsalted butter, I recommend it being at room temperature but it's not completely necessary, and mix that in as well until it starts forming little clumps everything is well mixed.
3. Mix your eggs and your syrup in a bowl and slowly add it into the mixture in the food processor, add a little bit at a time and whisk until it all clumps together.
4. Now that your dough is done, you can take it out of the processor. What I did was work with one half at a time. Sprinkle flour on your surface and on a rolling pin, then you're set to roll your dough until it's about half a centimeter thick (or less). 
5. Cut out shapes with your cookie cutters and get rid of the excess dough, which you can roll again if you want and make more shapes. I made 12 cookies with this recipie, but you can make a lot more or less depending on how many times you roll the dough and how thick you want your cookies to be. 
6. Put your cut out shapes on an oven tray with grease proof paper on it and bake at 170° C (338° F) for about 20 minutes or until brown on top. 

For the icing

I like to do my icing as I wait for the cookies to cool down. I used the CK Royal Icing mix, you can always make royal icing from scratch and for that I can recomment the person whose recipie this is based on, CupcakeJemma's royal icing video is great if you want to do your own. 

I used CK's mix in red and green (festive colours, yay!) which meant I didn't need any food colouring but if you have plain white icing and want some pops of colour you can use any food colours you want. According to their packaging, you have to use 1 tbsp of water per every 1/2 cup of CK's powder mix, but I found this to be way too liquid for a piping bag so I added about 1/2 cup more powder. 

I popped my mixture into a piping bag and when the cookies cooled I got to decorating. I must say, I'm not a proffessional, these cookies are just about having some fun with Christmas spirit. 

I hope you enjoyed this post! I'll talk to you very soon,

Natalia xx