Gingerbread, just in time for Christmas!

For those of you who like gingerbread, here’s a recipe my husband made, that I can eat! (I’m actually not a huge fan of gingerbread, but this was good.) I’m sorry the picture is tiny and harsh, he took the picture for me with his camera, and I’m having issues getting pictures off of my camera, but I think I have a couple of it sliced, and if I get them I’ll add them to the post. He also further altered it to make me a birthday cake, and while definitely a dense cake (no angel food here!) it’s very moist. When I get him to cough up those alterations as well, I’ll post those too!

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup quinoa flour
• 1 cup All purpose, gluten free flour (I use Bob’s Red Mill)
• 3/4 cup brown rice flour
• 1/2 cup potato starch
• 2 1/4 teaspoons xanthan gum
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 8 Tablespoons Earth Balance (soy free! They DO make it.)
• 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup evaporated cane juice
• 3 teaspoons “Ener-G” egg replacer mixed with 4 Tablespoons of water (or egg replacement of your choice to equal 2 eggs)
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 3/4 cup almond milk + 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1/2 cup hot water

 

• Preheat the oven to 350°.
• Grease a loaf pan then line the pan with parchment paper, including the sides. Let it hang over a bit to give you “handles” to take it out later. Also grease the paper (just where the batter will end up touching, not your “handles.)
• Combine the dry ingredients well (the first 11 ingredients on the list) thoroughly in a bowl, and set aside.
• Combine the butter and sugars into a bowl and whip with an electric miser until fluffy.
• Add the Ener-G mixture to the butter/sugar mixture, and mix some more until that is also combined.
• Add the molasses and curdled almond milk to the butter/sugar/egg mixture.
• Mix the flour mixture into the wet ingredients about 1/2 cup at a time, incorporating it before you add more.
• Finally add the hot water and mix some more.
• Pour the batter into the greased loaf pan (you’ll need to spread it out, but don’t worry about getting it perfectly flat.
• Bake for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick poked into the middle comes out clean.
• Let it cool, then lift out, and eat!

This recipe was inspired by this one (which isn’t vegan, but is gluten free.)

Black & White Cookies!

Today was a dreary, cold and rainy day, and I wanted cookies, so I handed my husband the “Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar” book he’d gotten me for Christmas last year, and asked him to pleeeeeaaase make me cookies. He agreed (YAY!!!) and decided to try making the Black & White cookies, soy and gluten free. (Such a sweet husband…he remembered that when we met I used to always get Black & White cookies…it’s a NY thing I think.) First he substituted Bobs Red Mill All Purpose Gluten Free Flour for the flour in the recipe. He also used my doTerra essential oils instead of lemon and orange extracts. He substituted soy milk for almond milk, and mixed up the batter. It smelled right, so onto a cookie sheet and into the oven the first 3 went. This is one of the resulting cookies from that batch. If you know Black & White cookies, they are very cakey…a soft chewy cookie.

Very much NOT a cakey cookie

They came out crunchy, crispy and crumbly. The flavor wasn’t bad, but the texture was very far off. Perhaps it was the gluten free flour, or the fact that we’re at a high altitude (about 5000 feet) but these were not turning out to be what we were hoping for. Now I can’t take credit for the fixes, as that was all him, which resulted in an entirely different recipe all together, and it definitely worked! So this may have to be a “Vegan, Soy & Gluten Free at High Altitude” Black & White Cookie Recipe!

Ingredients for the Cookies:

• 1 1/2t Ener-G Egg Replacer
• 2T water
• 1c Almond Milk
• 2t Lemon Juice
• 1/2c Olive Oil
• 1 1/4c Sugar
• 1 1/2t Vanilla Extract
• 10 drops doTerra lemon essential oil
• 10 drops doTerra wild orange essential oil
• (The essential oils really have a better flavor, and are less processed than the extracts, but if you must use extracts, about 1/4t each of the lemon and orange.)
• 3c Bobs Red Mill Gluten Free Baking Flour
• 1/4c Cornstarch
• 1 1/4t Baking powder
• 1/2t Baking soda
• 3/4t Salt
• 1t Xanthan Gum

Directions for Cookies:

• Preheat oven to 350*
• Line two cookie sheets with parchment, or use two silicon baking sheets.
• In a small bowl combine Ener-G egg replacer with water.
• In a medium bowl, combine the almond milk and lemon juice and let curdle for 1 minute.
• Add the oil, sugar, vanilla, lemon, and orange to the almond milk mixture and whisk well.
• In a large bowl (I never said this was a one dish recipe…it made lots of dirty dishes!) mix together the dry ingredients except for the xanthan Gum (that would be the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt)
• Gently pour the wet ingredients (from the medium bowl) into the dry ingredients (in the large bowl.) Stir thoroughly. Add the xanthan gum and Ener-G “egg.” Mix well.
• Use an ice cream scoop (or a 1/4 cup scoop) to plop the cookies on the sheet. Leave some space (maybe 2″ between them) as they mostly puffed UP and not OUT.
• Bake for 16-18 minutes until cooked through. (The toothpick trick works well for this – if you insert a toothpick in the middle of the cookie and it comes out doughy, they aren’t done yet!)
• Remove the cookies from the oven, and flip them onto a cooling rack (or a wooden cutting board…since we don’t have a cooling rack) and let them cool while you make the icing.

Cookies starting to be iced

Ingredients for Icing:

• 4c powdered sugar
• 1/4c (plus a few table spoons “just in case”) boiling water
• 2 drops vanilla extract
• 2T carob powder
• 1t salt

Directions for Icing:

• Pour 1/4c of the boiling water into the powdered sugar in a medium bowl, and whisk together. Add the 2 drops of vanilla. Mix until it’s a thick glaze.
• Spoon this glaze over one half of each cookie.
• There should be some icing left. To that add the carob powder and salt, and whisk well.
• Spread this glaze over the other half of the cookie.
• Let the cookies sit for a few minutes to let the glaze set.
• Now they’re ready to eat! (And they don’t store very well, but if you keep them in an airtight container, and cool, they do ok for a couple of days.)
  

  All done! (but one's missing...)

So, the cookie recipe started out as being from “Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar” but evolved much. The white icing is exactly from their book (but it IS a standard glaze recipe) and the carob is ours. Let us know what you think!

This made about 12 cookies, and I can usually only eat about half of a cookie at a time, so it could be 24 servings easily!

My husband caught me eating my cookie...yummy!