Iced Gingerbread Men

There's a particular kind of December afternoon when the light has gone by four and the windows have steamed up and someone has put the radio on in the kitchen. Outside it's properly cold. Inside, the oven is on and the whole house smells of ginger and brown sugar and warm butter. This is when you make gingerbread men.

The dough is a forgiving thing. Flour, butter, golden syrup, spice. You roll it out on the kitchen table and press the cutter through, and within ten minutes there's a tray of little people lined up waiting for the oven. The icing comes after, and that's the bit children want to do. Faces drawn slightly wonky. Buttons piped in uneven rows. A few that end up looking startled or sad. None of it matters. They're going to be eaten by Tuesday.

I've been making these every December for as long as I can remember, and the recipe hasn't changed. I wrote it down in the notebook one rainy afternoon years ago: gingerbread, golden syrup, the kitchen full of people. That's still all it needs to be. We're only making biscuits.