Gingerbread Men Shaped Lollipops

I love the holiday season. I especially love that it really gives me an excuse to go all out making all sorts of food goodies to give away. When I first started making lollipops a handful of years ago, I bought a variety of molds at a baking store (SugarCraft). The metal molds made by Sweet Creations are definitely my favorite. You can see what they look like in my Old Fashioned Lollipop post. I love them because they are easy to use and come in a variety of shapes.

In the packs of molds that I bought previously, I had ended up with two person shaped molds. One day, as I was making some root beer lollipops, I looked at those two and thought, "Wow! Those would make awesome gingerbread men for the holidays!" And then my life got busy and the idea got put on the back burner because I didn't really want to buy as many packs of molds as I'd need to get a reasonable number of the gingerbread men molds.

For some reason last month, on a whim, I decided to call the company and ask if they could make me a special pack of all gingerbread men molds. The folks at Sweet Creations were wonderful. Within a week, I had my new pack of molds and was ready to roll! They said they could create any package of molds from the shapes they offer that I wanted! How great is that? I am so happy that I called them, because look at how cute these little lollipops are!!!

I made a batch to give away to the little ones in our family for Christmas. I always make goodies to give to their parents, why shouldn't they get something special too? I made the lollipops exactly as I describe in my Old Fashioned Lollipops post. The only difference here was the addition of the white details. For this I used a stiff royal icing (I used the recipe on a package of Wilton meringue powder) and then let them dry uncovered at room temperature until the icing was dry and hard. Although most of our homes are on the dry side this time of year from the furnace, don't leave the lollipops out any longer than necessary or they could end up absorbing moisture and getting too sticky.

I then packaged them the same way I described in my previous lollipop post. I dusted them with powdered sugar and brushed the excess off with a pastry brush. Into the bags they went with pretty bows and, voila!, perfect little gingerbread men lollipops!