a very vegan christmas: gingerbread

Nothing says Christmas quite like gingerbread.

And nothing feels quite like Christmas is on its way than baking gingerbread in the light of the Christmas tree with carols playing in the background!

So here’s how:-

Ingredients
(makes about 30 cookies)
12oz/350g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3-6 teaspoons of ground ginger (depending on how gingery you like it)
4oz/100g vegan margarine
6oz/175g soft dark brown sugar
1 flax egg
4oz/100g black treacle (molasses)

Sift the flour, baking powder and ginger together and stir.  Then rub in the margarine by hand until it forms coarse breadcrumbs.

Stir in the sugar.

Then make a well in the centre of the mix and add the treacle and the flax egg.

Get your hands in there to mix it all together – you may need to add a little more water – until it forms a ball of dough (see above).

Roll the dough out onto a lightly floured surface.  I tend to cut the dough into three or four sections then roll it out so it doesn’t become too unweildy.  It needs to be about 0.5cm thick….

…but a certain uneveness gives it a homemade charm!

Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes.  We have all kinds of cookie cutters, one in the shape of Santa that looks like a big fat blob and another like a candy cane, but the candy cane shaped cookies always break, so this year, for the sake of formality, I stuck to stars!

Lay your gingerbread shapes out on lined baking trays and bake in batches, one tray at a time, at 190*C/375*F/Gas Mark 5 for 8 minutes per tray, then take out and allow to cool on the tray.

*oh little star of bethlehem….* (sing to yourself loudly and out of tune whilst gingerbread is cooking)

Once cool, you can ice them in anyway you like.  This year I just went for a sprinkling of confectionary sugar….

…and then ate them!

Himself likes to make rude shapes out of the remaining dough. But I have left that gem to your imaginations….

Gingerbread makes great Christmas presents and can be frozen for up to one month.  Make sure you put it in the freezer before you start eating – otherwise you will eat them all….

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 8th, 2010 at 9:51 am and is filed under recipes of the week, very vegan christmas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.