Gingerbread people
Its always pleasing to serve up a nostalgic childhood treat, with all the flavours and textures that you remember, but none of the dairy, eggs or refined sugar. Makes 15 gingerbread people.
Ingredients
- ½ cup of cold-pressed safflower or sunflower oil
- ½ cup of barley malt syrup (brown rice syrup works too if that's all you have, but misses some of the golden syrup/molasses flavour)
- 3½ cups of wholemeal spelt flour
- Heaped ¾ tsp bicarbonate of soda
- Pinch of salt
- 2 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp ground nutmeg
- Pinch of ground cloves
- Handful of currants (for dressing your gingerbread people)
Preparation
- Preheat the oven to 185 degrees.
- Combine all the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl, lightly whisking to get rid of any lumps (cheats way to whisk). Set aside.
- Combine all the wet ingredients in a small saucepan and gently heat to the point where the rice malt is just liquified, so its easier to stir into the dry ingredients. Avoid over-heating or the wet ingredients, or they will start cooking the dough when mixed with the dry ingredients.
- Using a fork, stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until well combined. Lightly knead into two separate balls. Wrap each ball in clingwrap and put into the refrigerator to cool the dough - 10-20 minutes will be enough.
- Roll your first dough ball out between two sheets of greaseproof baking paper to approximately ½ cm thick. Cut out your gingerbread people, placing onto a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. Do the same with the second dough ball.
- Knead the leftovers from the two balls to make a third ball and continue cutting until all the dough is used. (Any scraps that can't be made into gingerbread people can be used to make a couple of bonus jam gingerbread tarts).
- Add the currants plus any other decorations (e.g. glitter) to 'dress' your gingerbread people.
- Bake for 7-9 minutes and cool on wire racks.
Recipe by The Smug Vegan at http://thesmugvegan.com/?p=112