Gingerbread cookies

I made these from an online recipe (now disappeared: gone to the great deleted items bin in the sky) which I then altered and played with a bit. They are fragrant, spiced, cinnamony ginger cookies that you can either give as gifts, munch on with your Christmas coffee (or a glass of cold milk, mmm) or decorate and hang up in the window, a la Sweden circa 1955. The hanging-in-the-window thing doesn't work too well in Queensland. You tend to discover...mould...after about two days of festive enjoyment.
It also tends to become endurance baking after a while, as you can get up to 300 of these babies out of one lot of dough. Sometimes, if I lose it after the first few batches, I just freeze the dough and continue later.
I'm going to pack them in little containers and give them as Christmas presents.

Gingerbread cookies

• 1 cup water
  
• 1/2 a cup of golden syrup
  
• 2 tablespoons (or more) ground cinnamon


• 1 tablespoon (approx) each of ground cloves, ground ginger and bicarb soda
  
• 2 teaspoons of ground cardamom


• 300g good unsalted butter


• Couple of grinds of black pepper
  
• 2 and 1/2 cups caster sugar
  
• 7 and a half cups of plain flour
  

Mix butter, sugar and syrup in big bowl. Add spices and bicarb, then water. Stir in 2 cups of the flour first, and then the rest of the flour. Feel your muscles expand as you try to stir the solid lump of dough. Throw it in a plastic bag and leave it in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.
When you're ready to go, preheat the oven to hot (200 degrees Celsius for those who have a non-terrible terrible oven). Roll the dough out in sections, using lots of flour as you go, fairly thin, cut out festive shapes and bake for about 5 to 8 minutes.

These biscuits are very unforgiving at the bake stage. Do not neglect them, nor answer the phone, nor get distracted in any way. A burned biscuit is not a merry biscuit.

My "mountain of hearts"...