Vegan Gingerbread Biscuits & Egg-Free Royal Icing

{ B l o g m a s :: day seventeen }

By popular request (I'm basing this on the 5 favourites my tweet received) I've decided to share the recipe for the vegan gingerbread biscuits and royal icing I made the other day!


I frickin' love gingerbread but it is seemingly impossible to find good free-from gingerbread men in supermarkets or bakeries. They always over compensate with the ginger and the texture is just wrong so I figured it was about time I tried to make my own! My recipe has been adapted from this one from Bit Of The Good Stuff. These biscuits are beautifully spiced and on the nice side of crunchy with a slightly soft middle. Once left for a few hours they become a little softer and chewier but they're still bloody nice. I got about 30 biscuits out of this recipe but it depends on how thick you roll your dough and what size cookie cutters you use. I really would recommend using the icing with these biscuits, too, because they're quite dry and overpowering without it!

INGREDIENTS.
100g dairy-free butter. I used Flora.
85g light brown sugar.
4 tablespoons of black treacle.
2 tablespoons dairy-free milk. I used Alpro Original almond milk.
1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
280g plain flour.
1/2 teaspoon baking powder.
1/2 teaspoon salt.
1 1/2 teaspoons of ginger.
1 teaspoon of cinnamon.
Tiny pinch of nutmeg. (Although I'll leave this out next time!)

METHOD.

Step One. Put your butter, milk, sugar and treacle into a bowl and pop it into the microwave to melt together for around 2 minutes. Once it's all melted stir together with a fork to fully combine and add your vanilla extract.

Step Two. In a large bowl combine all of your dry ingredients and mix so they're fully jumbled up.

Step Three. Begin to add your wet ingredients to your dry in small amounts, stirring thoroughly between each addition. Continue to mix until it becomes a dough. Mine was quite a wet dough but it wasn't so wet that it couldn't become a solid shape or that it would stick to bowl.

Step Four. Wrap your dough in cling-film and set it to chill for one hour. My dough was slightly warm due to the heated wet ingredients so I put it in the freezer for 15 minutes initially and then swapped it to the fridge.

Step Six. Preheat your oven to 1800c and prepare two baking trays with baking paper. Choose your cookie cutters and arrange them into a nice flatlay for Insta.

Step Seven. Once your hour is up remove your dough from the fridge and dust your surface with flour. To roll my dough I used a half-pint glass because I couldn't find my rolling pin and rolled it out until it was pound-coin-thickness. Now you can begin to cut out your shapes using your cookie cutters! Instead of going with the classic gingerbread man shape I did stars, Christmas trees and angels.

Step Eight. Lay all of your shapes onto your baking trays. You don't need to leave that much room between them because these biscuits don't spread but don't completely pack them on either. Pop your biscuits into the oven to bake for around 12-18 minutes, depending on your oven and how thick you've rolled them. I made them rly thick which meant they took longer!

Step Nine. Whilst the biscuits are baking begin to make your icing!

VEGAN ROYAL ICING.
Making vegan icing didn't even occur to me when I first decided to bake these biscuits  but of course I couldn't ice them with the standard icing sugar & water mix because it would have been way too thin. I was going to go by this recipe originally but none of the shops near me stock corn syrup so I tried this one by Wallflower Kitchen (which is a frickin' amazing vegan blog btw) as I did have a tin of chickpeas in my cupboard. I know it sounds insane but it actually worked out so much better than I could of imagined, although I did add vanilla extract to make it taste nicer. The icing was perfectly thick enough to ice biscuits using a piping bag and small circular nozzle. This is also WAY too much icing for the number of biscuits I made but it's fine because I'm going to make more tomorrow so I'll keep the icing in the fridge overnight.

INGREDIENTS.
The water from a 400g tin of chickpeas. (I used Sainsbury's own brand chickpeas.)
3 cups of icing sugar.
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
A dash of water.

METHOD.
Step One. Drain your chickpea water from the can into a bowl and set aside the tin of chickpeas to roast for a snack later!

Step Two. Using an electric hand whisk (or a plain whisk if you've got guns) whisk the chickpea brine until it increases in volume and becomes really frothy. Add your vanilla extract and whisk some more.

Step Three. In one-cup intervals, add your icing sugar. You want your icing to be thick enough to ice your biscuits easily but not so thick that it welds onto your whisks. A slow drip from the whisk is ideal consistency! I added a dash of water to mine when it got too thick and it worked a dream.

Step Four. Transfer your icing into a piping bag complete with a small circular nozzle and ice your biscuits! My icing skills leave something to be desired but what can ya do. Allow your biscuits to cool completely before icing otherwise it'll just melt right off and that ain't fun.

I'm not sure how well these biscuits keep because my family literally ate them all within 24 hours but I'm sure kept within an airtight container they should last for a few days. I'm seriously considering baking them for Christmas Day to enjoy crumbled with a scoop of vanilla Swedish Glaze dairy-free ice cream!

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