Gingerbread Cookies with Nuts and Orange Icing

This is my favorite version of the Christmas gingerbread cookies. They are made with nuts and an amazing orange icing.
These little Christmas treats should be prepared at least two weeks in advance. The day of baking they are very tough and they need some days of resting to get they crispness.
My secret ingredient is the homemade spice mix that makes them amazingly aromatic!

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Here are the proportions of ingredients:
♥  500g flour
♥  350g honey
♥  150g butter
♥  1 eggs
♥  2 tablespoons homemade vanilla sugar (optional, honey makes it already quite sweet!)
♥  4 teaspoons homemade gingerbread spices
♥  75g walnuts (or pecans)
♥  2 teaspoons cocoa powder
♥  1 teaspoon baking powder
Orange icing (little portion):
♥  1 tablespoon of icing sugar
♥ around 1 teaspoon of orange juice
♥ pinch of orange zest
1. In a big bowl mix flour, egg, honey, spices, cocoa powder and baking powder.

2. In a little saucepan melt butter. Add it to the cookie batter.

3.  Add crushed nuts and mix well all ingredients. Leave the dough for at least 20min in a cold place. After this time dough will get thicker and less sticky.

4. Portion by portion roll the dough out (it should be 3-5mm thick) and cut out your favorite shapes. If after cooling down the dough is still too sticky you might add a tiny little bit of flour.

5. Bake at 180′C for about 10min. Cookies should get a little bit darker. After baking you can either leave them as they are, decorate with colorful icing or cover with my favorite orange icing.
Just mix the icing sugar with orange juice and orange zest. Paint your baked cookies with it and put them back in the oven at 180’C for about 1min (untill the icing start to bubble). It’s ready! Enjoy! 🙂 ginger cookies