Vegan gingerbread cookies

Step 1

Place coconut oil in a small pot and melt it on the lowest setting. Let it cool down a little bit.

Step 2

Sift the flour into a medium size bowl. Add baking soda, all the spices and salt. Mix really well.

Step 3

Place melted coconut oil, dark brown sugar and reduced aquafaba in a large bowl. Cream them together with an electric whisk until well combined and slightly thickened. Add maple syrup and whisk some more until you get a homogeneous mixture.

Step 4

Fold 1/3 of the flour mix into the wet ingredients and, once combined, add the remaining two thirds, one by one. Make sure there are no flour pockets and everything is well combined but do not knead. The dough will be quite loose and sticky, that's fine, it's the way it should be. Divide the dough roughly into 2 portions and wrap each in a piece of cling film (glad wrap). Place them in the fridge for at least 1 hour. You can safely keep it in the fridge overnight too.

Step 5

Before you are about to take the dough out of the fridge, set the oven to 175° C / 350° F and line two baking trays with a piece of baking paper.

Step 6

After resting, take the first portion of the dough out of the fridge. Give it a few minutes to bring it to room temperature. Roll it out (gently pressing with a rolling pin) on a lightly floured surface. Roll the dough out quite thick (about 5 mm / 0.2 inch) and cut the cookies out of it with cookie cutters. If you want the cookies to be crunchy, roll them out a bit thinner and bake them for longer.

Step 7

Arrange the cookies on the prepared baking trays. You don't need to leave a lot of space between them as they don't expand much. Group similar size cookies together so that they cook in the same time. Bake small cookies for about 7-9 minutes and larger for 10-12 minutes. The longer you bake them for the crispier (and less soft and chewy) they will turn out so adjust baking time to your preference.

Step 8

To make the icing, mix icing sugar with a very small amount of water (added very gradually) until you obtain a thick sugar paste. I used beetroot juice (squeezed with my hand from 1 coarsely grated beetroot) instead of water to make pink icing and a touch of matcha powder (and water) to make green icing. If you want to do that divide the icing sugar between 3 bowls and treat each portion accordingly.

Step 9

Place your icing into a small plastic or pastry bag. Push it all into one corner and cut a tiny bit off that corner with a pair of scissors. Start with a small hole and make it bigger if necessary. Apply the icing by squeezing the icing through the hole.