Preheat your oven to 350°F/180°C, fan forced/convection heat (some of you will be looking for a steam oven setting here but this is a conventional oven recipe, so no steam!). Grease several cookie sheets (or line with parchment paper) and set aside.
Put the butter, brown sugar and golden syrup into a pan and cook over medium heat, stirring, until the butter and sugar have melted and the mixture is smooth. Increase the heat to bring the mixture to the boil, then cook for 1 minute before turning off and removing from heat. Allow to cool for 5-10 minutes while you get the rest of the ingredients ready.
Sift the flour, baking soda and spices into a very large mixing bowl. Give it a whisk to make sure the soda and spices are incorporated through the flour. In general I can't be bothered sifting ingredients, but here it really is necessary so you don't have lumps of flour or soda in the dough later.
Pour the hot mixture over the flour mixture and use a wooden spoon to stir everything together. It’s hard work but keep mixing until it’s smooth with no lumps of flour remaining.
Tip the dough out onto a clean surface and knead until smooth and firm (it will be hot – my hands cope fine after years of practice, but if yours can’t, a very clean pair of kitchen gloves will help). If you’re finding the dough too much to handle as one mass, split it into two or three portions for kneading.
Take a portion of your dough and roll it out to 6mm/¼ inch thickness. You shouldn’t need to flour the surface as this dough is firm and smooth enough to lift cleanly after rolling. Rolling tip: I have a couple of narrow lengths of lightweight scrap wood exactly the right thickness, which I sit either side of the dough – as the rolling pin flattens the dough it rolls over the wood and you end up with a very uniform sheet of dough, exactly the same thickness all over. Have a look at the process photos for an example. Want thinner dough? Just get thinner wood! Your local home improvement store is bound to have some offcuts for cheap or even free.
Cut your chosen shapes from the rolled dough and lift them gently onto the prepared baking sheets. Leave about 1.5cm/¼ inch between each cookie.
Bake the cookies until they’re evenly golden. 12 minutes is my standard time – a little less for thinner or very small cookies, a little more for large gingerbread house panels. Remove from oven and allow to cool on the tray for a couple of minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Decorate the cookies as you like and store in a well-sealed container, or package into clear bags for gifts.