Gingerbread Biscuits
When my children were small, there were very few recipes written with alternative ingredients in mind. Everything had sugar in. I experimented with fructose and xylitol, I was not particulaly happy with the results of either, and using honey alone in this recipe did not give the texture desired. Then I discovered coconut sugar.
Coconut sugar is now quite readily available, and also a good substitute in cookie recipes. This recipe makes up to 25 cookies (I often have helpers who love raw cookie dough - and hence I can only apporoximate the outcome). When I make these I always use a vegan margarine. If you are intolerant to egg, use egg replacer as per the package instructions.
Ingredients (for approximately 25 cookies)
60g butter or margarine
125g coconut sugar
4 level tablespoons honey
225g spelt flour
2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 egg
Instructions
Coconut sugar is now quite readily available, and also a good substitute in cookie recipes. This recipe makes up to 25 cookies (I often have helpers who love raw cookie dough - and hence I can only apporoximate the outcome). When I make these I always use a vegan margarine. If you are intolerant to egg, use egg replacer as per the package instructions.
Ingredients (for approximately 25 cookies)
60g butter or margarine
125g coconut sugar
4 level tablespoons honey
225g spelt flour
2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 egg
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 190C/ 375F/ Gas Mark 5. Grease or line a baking sheet or 2 (I use teflex baking liners, as they can be washed and reused over and over again).
- In a small pan, melt the sugar, butter/ margarine and honey.
- In a large bowl, sift together the flour, ginger, cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda.
- Pour in the melted ingredients and combine with a wooden spoon quickly. The mixture should be a soft dough. If it is too sticky (because measuring honey can be a little bit tricky) add sifted four to create a good consistency. When adding flour, you dilute the ginger flavour, so my top tip (if too sticky) is to sift together an additional 110g flour with 1 teaspoon of ginger, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, and add a little at a time. any left over can be used for rolling out, or stored for the next batch you make (or as a thickener for spicy stews).
- Roll the dough out on a floured surface to just inder 0.5cm thick and use shaped cutters to make the designs you would like. Now my children are older, I make round cookies, as it is relatively quick and easy, though when they were young, we made every cookie shape we owned! When you cut the cookies out, you will be left with offcuts, simply put them together as a ball, and then roll out again. Repeat until all use or you only have a small amount left, which can be manually shaped into a flat cookie.
- Carefully place on abaking sheets with a little room around each one (I use a flat fish slice to pick them up from the floured surface and move to the baking sheet).
- Bake for 10 minutes or until firm and golden. (Please note, they will harden more as they cool).
- I do not move them to a cooling rack until they have set and firmed up. Once on a cooling wrack you can decorate them if you wish - or enjoy them as they are.