In a bowl beat together the sugar, margarine and golden syrup until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

In a separate bowl stir together the flour, ginger, cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda.

Add the flour mixture to the bowl of wet ingredients and stir together until fully combined.

Bring the mixture together into a ball and place on a floured surface.

Dust a rolling pin with flour and then roll the dough out to approx 0.5cm thick. Don’t roll the dough thinner than this otherwise the cookies will end up crunchy.

Cut out the cookies using bear-shaped cookie cutters (or whatever shape you desire). To stop the dough sticking to the cookie cutter, dip it in flour before each cut. Bring the remaining dough back together, re-roll it and cut out more cookies - you should get 8 x 4” (10cm) bears in total.

Place the bears on a tray lined with baking paper. Leave a little bit of space between the cookies because they will expand a bit in the oven.

Place the tray in the refrigerator for 15 minutes whilst you preheat the oven to 150°C fan (170°C conventional / 325°F / gas mark 3).

Bake for 10-12 minutes until they are a light golden brown, which will give you a soft and chewy biscuit once cooled.

Let the cookies cool on the tray as they’ll be quite soft to start with. Transfer them to a cooling rack after 15 minutes and make sure they’ve cooled completely before decorating.

Make the icing by stirring together the icing sugar and dairy free milk. Add this to a piping bag with a fine nozzle and decorate the bears with scarves or with icing all over if you want to make them polar bears!