Vegan Gingerbread Men

This month’s vegan treat is Gingerbread Men! (The clue was in the title really…) The child in me loves making these as they are so much fun. Cutting out shapes and ten decorating colourfully with icing and any other treats you fancy, what’s not to like? And of course, as is pretty much every recipe I’ve done so far, it’s super easy. This recipe was in fact designed by Waitrose with young children in mind. It also as helpful ideas for how to turn these into Christmas decorations!

As I did previously, to turn this recipe vegan I just swapped out the butter for dairy-free margarine, simple! While this recipe is very self explanatory, one tip I will give it to melt the margarine, sugar and syrup on a very low heat to avoid burning the sugar. This also helps keep the temperature of the mixture down (obviously) which is useful for when you mix it in with the flour and come to manipulate your dough as if it was too warm it’d be hard to handle and need chilling time.

Another suggestion would be to add some more ginger. If you’re considering making these, I’m assuming ginger is something you like so if I were you I’d add another 1-2 tsps of ground ginger to the mix. There are obviously other spices such as cinnamon that you can include but as I personally don’t like them I won’t be recommending that you do!

With my gingerbread man cutter I made 28 men before I gave up re-rolling and finished the dough off in a blob which gives you the perfect excuse to erm… ‘test’ the outcome when it comes out of the oven. I left mine to cool on the tray for about 3-5minutes before transferring tem to a wire rack to cool completely. To decorate I just outlined the men using icing pens and drew on a face and some buttons. You can of course use the icing to stick other things on or push things in for the eyes while the dough is still soft and warm.

Here is the recipe:

125g dairy-free margarine (unsalted butter)

100g dark muscovado sugar

4 tbsp golden syrup

325g plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2tsp ground ginger (I recommend using 3-4 tsp)

Preheat the oven to 170°C. Line baking trays with baking parchment

Melt the butter, sugar and syrup in a medium saucepan, stirring occasionally, then remove from the heat

Sieve the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ginger into a bowl and stir the melted ingredients into the dry ingredients to make a stiff dough

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and roll to a thickness of about 5mm. Dip biscuit cutters into flour before cutting the dough. Place the shapes onto the lined baking trays and bake, in batches, for 9-10 minutes until light golden brown and allow to cool completely before icing

Lick your spoon!