- Food: Vegan Gingerbread Cookies
- Writer: Lizzie Green
- Content-Type: Food Blog
These gingerbread cookies are made without any animal products, making them the ideal holiday treat.
They are fun to make, fun to decorate, and fun to eat due to their soft texture, chewy consistency, and delectable blend of spices.
These vegan gingerbread cookies could very well become my new go-to treat for the holiday season. Because of how delicious they are, I have already prepared them quite a few times this month.
Because we (I should say, Jack) continued consuming batch after batch of these cookies, I just had to make them again this weekend so that we could take some pictures and share them with all of you.
These gingerbread cookies are made with vegan ingredients and are chewy, soft, and delightfully spiced.
If you ask me, they taste just as fantastic as conventional gingerbread, but the fact that they are created with healthy, plant-based ingredients such as coconut sugar, coconut oil, and almond butter – my secret ingredient – sets them apart from regular gingerbread.
It gives these vegan gingerbread cookies such a delicious flavor that I couldn’t resist sampling the dough as I was putting it together and kept picking off little bits to eat.
Vegan Gingerbread Cookies Ingredients
Food: Gingerbread Cookies (Source: Simply Recipes)Even though these plant-based gingerbread cookies are a pleasure, you can be assured that they are loaded with elements that are beneficial to your health. To create these, you will need the following ingredients:
- To prepare a flax egg, you need ground flaxseed and a small amount of water to mix them together. In addition to lending a hand in bringing the other components of these vegan gingerbread biscuits together, it also contributes fiber and healthy fats.
- Flour made from spelled – Don’t stress if you don’t already have any spelled flour on hand. A combination of white and whole wheat flour in the ratio of 50/50 will also work for this purpose.
- Spices are an essential component of every successful gingerbread recipe. Ginger is one of the spices that I utilize, along with cinnamon and cardamom. They pack this cookie with a lovely toasty flavor all the way through.
- Baking soda is added so that the cookies have more volume after being baked.
- These vegan gingerbread cookies get their chewy texture, rich flavor, and soft texture from melted coconut oil.
- Almond butter contributes an additional layer of richness and a nutty depth of flavor to the dish.
- Coconut sugar is a natural sweetener that has a flavor that is similar to that of molasses. Because of this, it contributes an additional layer of complexity to the spicy and sweet flavor of the cookies.
- Molasses is a key ingredient in gingerbread. These cookies just have a hint of sweetness thanks to the addition of coconut sugar.
- And sea salt – Don’t skip it! It brings out the sweetness and spice in all of the flavors.
How to Make Vegan Gingerbread Cookies
These vegan gingerbread cookies, much like traditional sugar cookies, require a little bit of time and effort.
In spite of this, making them is a lot of fun; in fact, it’s the ideal pastime for celebrating the holidays, whether you do it with your family, your friends, or even by yourself. The following is what you need to do:
First, knead the dough until it is smooth. Flax seed meal combined with water should be whisked together before being placed aside to thicken. In the meantime, combine all of the dry ingredients with a whisk.
After that, add the rest of the wet ingredients to the flax mixture while continuing to whisk until the mixture is smooth.
After adding the dry ingredients, give everything a good toss to blend it. When the dough has reached a consistency where it can no longer be stirred, switch to using your hands to knead it and shape it into a thick disk.
Cover it with plastic wrap, and place it in the refrigerator for half an hour.
After that, spread it out. Rolling out the dough to a thickness of one-quarter of an inch requires placing it between two sheets of parchment paper and rolling it out.
Here comes the exciting part! Make the shapes you want by cutting cookies with cookie cutters.
In order to make as many cookies as I can, my preferred method is to start towards the outside and work my way inward, piecing together the cutouts. If you need extra cookies, you can reroll the scraps and cut them out again.
While you work, move the cutouts to a baking sheet that has been lined with parchment paper.
Now is the time to bake! Place the baking sheet into an oven preheated to 325 degrees and bake the cookies for approximately ten minutes, or until they have a golden hue.
If you have more cookies than will fit on a single baking sheet, bake the cookies one sheet at a time to ensure that they bake evenly.
It will be difficult to resist eating these cookies as soon as they come out of the oven since they smell so good, but it is essential that you do not do so.
Because they are delicate and soft, you should let them sit for ten minutes on the baking sheet before moving them to a cooling rack so that they can finish cooling fully.
Variations on Gingerbread Cookies
These vegan gingerbread cookies are not only delicious on their own, but they are also a lot of fun to decorate in a variety of different ways.
Use this vegan frosting, the glaze from this recipe, or a more traditional royal icing to frost the tops of the cookies. A light sprinkling of powdered sugar on them, in my opinion, would also make them seem super cute.
If you’re not in the mood to decorate the cookies or cut them out, you don’t have to do either of those things!
If you want your gingerbread cookies to be chewy and soft, rather than rolling out the dough, try forming it into balls instead.
You really can’t go wrong with either of these vegan gingerbread cookie variations because they are both so wonderful.
Be aware, though, that if you want to decorate the cookies, you will need to wait until they have reached room temperature before you start.
The frosting or icing will melt if it is still warm when it is applied to the cookies. I wish all of my friends a happy holiday!
Vegan Gingerbread Cookies
| Preparation time: one hour The cooking time is ten minutes. Duration: 1 hour and 10 minutes in total |
These gingerbread cookies are made without any animal products, making them the ideal holiday treat.
You can make soft ginger cookies by rolling the dough into balls, or you can use cookie cutters to cut the dough into the shapes of your choice.
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon ground flaxseed meal
- 3 tablespoons warm water
- 2¼ cups spelled flour (or white/wheat mix)
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger (3 for a stronger ginger flavor)
- ½ teaspoon cardamom
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
- ½ cup melted coconut oil
- ¾ cup coconut sugar
- ¼ cup almond butter
- ¼ cup unsulphured molasses (I used this one from Wholesome)
Instructions
Food: Gingerbread Cookies (Source: Simply Recipes)- Mix the ground flaxseed and the water together in a big bowl. Mix it up, then leave it aside for it to thicken.
- Flour, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, baking soda, and salt should all be mixed together in a medium-sized bowl.
- After giving the flax mixture one more swirl, add the molasses, coconut sugar, almond butter, and melted coconut oil. Give the mixture one more stir. Mix thoroughly with a whisk. Add the dry ingredients and give everything a good toss to blend. When the dough has reached the desired consistency, shape it into a thick disk by lightly kneading it with your hands. Wrap it in plastic wrap and place it in the refrigerator for half an hour.
- Prepare a large baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper and preheating the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Take the disk out of the refrigerator now. Roll out the dough until it is a quarter of an inch thick and place it between two sheets of parchment paper. (You may need to add a sprinkling of flour if the dough is too sticky to work with.) Make use of cookie cutters to cut out the necessary shapes, and position them on the baking pan in a precise manner. Re-roll any dough scraps that are left over.
- Bake for ten to twelve minutes, or until the edges are just beginning to turn a golden brown color (although this is hard to see since the cookies are dark). After removing from the oven, leave the cookies to cool for ten minutes on the baking sheet they were cooked on before moving them to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Alternately, you can shape any leftover dough into chewy ginger cookies rather than re-rolling any spare pieces of dough. Put a quarter cup of cane sugar into a low-sided basin. First, roll the dough into balls that are 1 1/2 inches in diameter, and then roll those balls in the cane sugar. Put the balls on a cookie sheet and use your fingertips to give them a slight indentation by pressing down. Bake 10 to 12 minutes.
Notes
Note: If you try to reduce the amount of coconut oil in the recipe, your cookies will end up being too dry.