Honey jumbles

Here's a secret formula I learnt in my kitchen this week: sugar + spice + all things nice = honey jumbles.
Now, you could always save yourself the trouble and pick up a pack of honey jumbles at the supermarket, but it won't beat having that warm and gingery aroma wafting through your home, or that happy feeling you get when you open the oven and pull out a tray of golden, fresh honey jumbles.
You might be surprised to see that this recipe actually doesn't include any honey at all – the golden syrup provides the sweetness and colour. If  this contradiction bothers you, you could probably swap out the golden syrup and replace with honey and brown sugar (but I haven't tried that yet)... Or, indeed, you could simply start calling them "golden syrup jumbles". But I digress.
No matter what you call 'em, the only thing to do with these jumbles is slather them with icing, brew a pot of tea, and plonk yourself down on the sofa with a good book.

Ingredients

Sugar + spice (the jumbles)
100 g unsalted butter, chopped
250 ml golden sytrup
400 g plain flour
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp mixed spice
2 tsp ground ginger
Pinch cloves
3 Tbs milk

All things n(icing)
1 egg white
240 g sifted icing sugar
2–3 tsp lemon juice
2 tsp plain flour
Food colouring of your choice

Method

1. In a medium saucepan, heat butter and golden syrup until just boiling (when bubbles begin to break on the surface). Remove from heat and cool for 10 minutes.
2. In the meantime, sift the dry ingredients. Once the syrup mixture is cooled, stir in the dry ingredients and milk. Mix well, then cover the saucepan with cling wrap and leave to rest for 2 hours.
3. Preheat oven to 180°C and line two baking trays with baking paper. 
4. Turn out about a quarter of the mixture onto a very lightly floured board or bench. Roll into a long snake shape approximately 2.5 cm in diameter, then cut with a knife into 5–6 cm lengths and place onto baking trays. Repeat this step three times until all the mixture has been used.
5. Bake 10 minutes and cool on trays. When the jumbles are completely cold, spread icing over them with a knife.

Makes 16

All things n(icing)

1. Beat egg white in a cup with a fork until it's as frothy as you can get it.
2. Place half the quantity of icing sugar in a bowl and make a well in the centre . Tip the egg white into the well and mix thoroughly, starting from the inside and slowly working outwards to the edge of the bowl.
3. Add the remaining icing sugar, flour and 2 tsp of the lemon juice and mix thoroughly again.
4. Add up to 1 tsp extra lemon juice to get the mixture to the right consistency.
5. With a knife, spread the icing over half the quantity of honey jumbles.
6. Add a few drop of the food colouring of your choice to the icing sugar mixture and mix well again before spreading it over the remaining half of the honey jumbles.
7. Leave to set at room temperature.

Tips

• Don't flour the board/bench too much, or your honey jumbles will have flour stuck all over them – even after cooking. A very light sprinkle will do the trick.
• Don't worry about the cracks that appear in the top of the jumbles as they cook. That's just what happens. After you've iced the jumbles, no one will be able to tell the cracks are there.
• Be careful not to over-cook the jumbles! Ten minutes should be enough. Eleven minutes will probably cause burnt edges.
• What's the right consistency of icing? I had to try a few times to get the icing on my jumbles smooth and shiny, and I think it helps to have a frothy egg white, to mix the ingredients together very well, and add enough lemon juice so that the mixture is thin enough to slowly run off a knife. If it's staying in a clump on your knife, it's not thin enough, and you should add more lemon juice. But be careful not to go too thin, because then the icing will trickle off the jumbles. Also remember that the food colouring will thin out the mixture even further.