• First, grab yourself a large mixing bowl or stand mixer and cream the butter for a minute or two or until it's nice and smooth.
  145 g Unsalted butter
• Next, add in the brown sugar and black treacle and give it a really good mix until the mixture is well combined.
  150 g Dark brown sugar, 200 g Black treacle
• Add in 1 egg and the vanilla extract and mix on high speed, you may need to scrape down the sides of the bowl a couple of times to make sure that everything is well incorporated.
  1 Medium Egg, 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
• In a separate mixing bowl add the flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, and salt and give it a quick mix.
  440 g Plain flour, ½ teaspoon Salt, 1 teaspoon Baking soda, 1 tablespoon Ground cinnamon, 1 teaspoon All spice, 1 tablespoon Ground ginger
• Now slowly add in the dry ingredients in with the wet ingredients and mix well until the mixture is combined into a slightly sticky dough.
• Divide the dough into two equal balls and press each ball into a slightly flattened disk shape about 2cm thick. Then wrap each piece of gingerbread dough into cling film (plastic food wrap) and place into the fridge to cool for a few hours. (do not skip the chilling stage as it's very important)
• After a few hours of chilling, preheat your oven to 180°C and remove your gingerbread dough out of the fridge.
  
• Lightly dust a clean work surface and the rolling pin with flour.
• Roll your first chilled gingerbread disk out onto your floured surface. It needs to be about 1cm thick. Grab your gingerbread men cookie cutters and start cutting out your shapes and placing them onto a cookie sheet. If you don’t have a nonstick cookie sheet you can line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Make sure that your gingerbread men don’t touch each other as they will stick together when they're being baked.
• Re-roll any left-over dough and continue to cut out your gingerbread men shapes.
• Bake for 8-9 minutes in your preheated oven.
• Once baked leave them on the cookie sheet for a few minutes to cool slightly before you place them onto a wire rack to cool properly.
• Repeat the same with the second chilled gingerbread disk.

To decorate your gingerbread men.

• Once your gingerbread men have cooled grab yourself a mixing bowl and add in the icing sugar and water and mix until you have a smooth runny consistency.
  225 g Powdered icing sugar, 15 ml Water
• If you plan on having different colors as I did, separate the white glaze icing into 3 separate bowls in one bowl add a couple of drops of green food coloring, and mix well. In the second bowl, add a couple of drops of red coloring and mix, in the last bowl leave it white.
  2 drops Red food coloring, 2 drops Green food coloring
• Place each of the glazed icing colors into separate piping bags and start decorating your gingerbread men any way you like.
  Small candy's for the buttons
• Leave your decorated Gingerbread men for a while to set, then enjoy your festive cookies.