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I donít know if you guys can hear in the background there but thatís Philís parents
practicing their vocal Christmas songs for their concert coming up this week.
I am pretty excited to go and watch them and what Iím doing is while they practice I hang
in the kitchen making some vegan gingerbread, one of my favourite Christmas treats even
though I make it throughout the year because I love it that much.
But when it starts to get really snowy outside thatís when I really want to make some vegan
gingerbread. So I am looking out at a winter wonderland, the snow is falling. Itís gorgeous
and Iíve got my gingerbread started.
So what I do is start in a pot because weíre gonna heat those recipe up. It is a fantastic
recipe that works really well for cut outs. You can make them into ornaments, you can
make them it to a house, whatever you like.
So youíre gonna start with half a cup of brown rice or maple syrup and what I do is
I just fill the cup up halfway with that and then fill the rest with molasses.
You can use the light flavoured molasses or black strap whichever you prefer. Then youíre
going to add a pinch of salt, I know theyíre cookies but you do need a little bit of salt
to bring the flavours together and also to help the action of the baking soda once we
add it.
Spices that are going in here: Number one ginger, theyíre gingerbread! You gotta add
some ground ginger then cinnamon, all spice and a little bit of cloves.
Now if you donít have cloves or if you really canít stand cloves you can leave them out
or you can add a little bit of black pepper, add a bit more all spice but I find the flavorism,
I donít like cloves on its own necessarily, but altogether, wonderful!
So youíre gonna stir this together really well. So thereís all of our spices in the
pot, and Iím just gonna stir it around and mix it thoroughly into the molasses and syrup.
Then youíre gonna put this on to the stove and actually bring it to a boil. So keep an
eye on it. Make sure it doesnít burn on the bottom. You can see how much more liquid this
is now that it is heated up.
So to this weíre gonna add some coconut oil, one of my favourite oils for baking makes
excellent substitute for butter because it is a saturated fat.
Letís scoop out any last little bits of molasses from the cup. And the recipe calls for half
a cup of coconut oil. You can use less if you wish. I usually use a bit less than that,
and then stir it through here and because coconut oil is solid you wanna stir it through
until it melts.
Smells lovely! Ok. Now, comes my favourite part of this recipe weíre gonna add the baking
soda and your gonna add one teaspoon. This is a half teaspoon measure so we got two halves
there. And then youíre gonna stir it in and watch as it expands as the baking soda starts
to act. Make sure you get any chunks of baking soda broken up.
Ok. Itís the heat and the salt that is making this baking soda puff up like this. Ok. Once
you get it mix in donít stir it just let the air expand there.
So there is our wet section of the recipe. Now, youíre going to add the flour to make
into a cooking batter and what you should use is a whole grain flour. I listed ìSpeltî
in the recipe although you can use any kind of whole grain you can find, whole wheat if
thatís all you can find is ok.
Spelt is good just because itís a different grain than we normally eat. Any type of flour
will work pretty well. I would probably not use brown rice flour in this recipe just because
itís quite grainy and it doesnít really go very well with the vegan gingerbread.
So measure out your flour put it right into the pot and then stir it- stir it into come
up with your dough. Ok. A good idea is you only add part of the flour at first and make
sure you have enough liquid because certain flours can act differently depending on how
theyíre ground, depending on how the wet ingredients are working together, depending
on the moisture in the air, depending on all kinds of factors.
The ratio what to dry in your recipe can chance slightly so what Iím gonna do is add probably
two and a half cups to start. Letís see how that goes. I can always add more flour as
I go but I canít really take it out so start with that and see how it goes.
Vegan gingerbread dough is quite dry so donít be worried if your texture looking like this,
this is about perfect and this is actually my two and a half cups so I may need to add
more flour as I roll but that was a pretty good amount for this today.
Ok. After a certain point what you need to do is get in there with your hands and just
bring it together and make sure first of all you have clean hands. Yes we do!
And then make sure that it will hold together in a ball to see how solid that is, thatís
good! And I can probably work more flour into that but I like the texture, as long as it
doesnít stick to your hands, using less flour gonna be better because it will make for a
softer cookie.
Another important thing to keep in mind is that you donít wanna over mix this batter,
it helps to put it in the fridge so let it rest so if you want to at this point you can
divide the batter into halves.
Youíll be working with half, the other half you can put into a plastic wrap or wax paper
or whatever you like to use put that in the fridge and let it rest. Ok! Itís not necessary;
it just helps the vegan gingerbread make a softer texture.
So when youíre rolling out cookies what you wanna do is sprinkle some flour onto your
board. Philís mom has this lovely marble cutting board that is perfect for rolling
out cookies. You can put it in the freezer when youíre working with things that need
to be chilled.
And then you get your dough here and it doesnít hurt to sprinkle the top of the dough with
flour as well as sprinkling your rolling pin with flour.
Ok. So, weíre getting things rolled out here. Now if you do a thicker cookie it will be
softer, if you do a thinner cookie it will be crispier so itís up to you as how thin
or thick you make your cookies. I like to do about, Iím really bad in measurement but
I would say that that is like a quarter to a half of inch.
Somewhere in there is where I usually do my cookies, so you got it rolled out and then
you take your cutters and press them into the dough.
I usually like to do a variety of different cookie cutters but I only have one right now,
the man! And then they should lift easily out when you floured the counter or the board
otherwise you use like a spatula to lift them out and then youíre gonna put that on a cookie
sheet.
Once you get all of the pieces up and out you put the leftovers back together into a
ball. Re-flour your board because it will get sticky and then roll it out again and
repeat.
Once you get all your little men or women cut out then itís time to decorate them if
you wish and rather than using icing and sprinkles and stuff like that, you can make them healthy
by decorating with raisins for eyes. You can use peanuts for some buttons. Cranberries
are also nice, some red buttons and just press them a little bit into the vegan gingerbread
and as it bakes theyíll work their way in there.
If youíre making decorations this would be the time to make a decor, to make a hole in
them. What I mean to say is as if youíre making ornaments out of your cookies and what
you can do is take a fork or a knife or something like that and just make a hole, fork is a
little bit difficult because it wants to make multiple holes. Toothpick would probably be
the best job, best tool for this job.
So youíre gonna pop your gingerbread into the ones and at 300 degrees they take about
12-15 minutes. You want to wait until you really smell the scent of the gingerbread
coming out of the oven thatís really the best way to tell if these are done if you
can smell them.
Then once they are done you get to take them out, let them cool on the tray a little bit
first, otherwise theyíll be very tender, delicate if you will.
I know theyíre men but yes they are still delicate. Then you will take your little men
off, put them on a cooling rack to let them cool and then they are ready to eat.
Get creative with the toppings there are lots of good ideas out there. Slivered almonds
are an excellent one as well.
So I hope you enjoy your beautiful vegan gingerbread cookies. Most people when I bring these gingerbread
cookies canít tell at all that they are vegan and they are also blown away when I tell them
theyíre actually healthy cookies made with whole grain flour, low fat and low in sugar.
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