I realized today, as I was beating together the Crisco, sugar, and molasses, that my mom's gingerbread cookie recipe has only one non-vegan ingredient--egg! And fortunately, that's very easy to replace.
The only odd ingredient which you might not have in your house is flax seed. The post I linked to says you should get the non-ground kind so that it will keep, but then you have to grind it with a coffee grinder every time you use it... and I've found that throwing my bag of ground flax in the fridge does the job just fine--I've had a bag in there for almost a year and it's still going strong.
Ingredients:
Dry:
- 4 cups (17 oz.) all-purpose flour
- 1 t. salt
- 1 t. baking soda
- 2 t. baking powder
- 2 t. ginger
- 1 t. cloves (some people like to use up to twice as much, but any more than this makes me think I'm eating cough medicine. Also, I wouldn't use fresh cloves; it'll be really strong.)
- 3 t. cinnamon
- 1 t. nutmeg
Wet:
- 1 cup vegetable shortening (if you want to use "real" fake butter, Earth balance is widely recommended by many people, though I've tried it a couple of times and found it doesn't have much buttery flavor)
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 cup molasses
- 6 T water
- 4 T flax seed + a little extra (a flax egg is usually in a 3:1 ratio of water to flax, but the non-vegan version just calls for yolk so we need twice as much as per this recipe)
Icing:
- 3 cups confectioner's sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- dairy-free milk or water
To make the dough:
- Sift together dry ingredients.
- Grind flax seeds in grinding device of choice. If using a coffee grinder, initially grind a little extra flax and then discard it so that your 'eggs' don't taste like coffee.
- Put the flax seed in water and let it sit for ten minutes. I wouldn't bother mixing, so long as the flax is fully submerged.
- In a large bowl, cream vegetable shortening, sugar, and molasses. Beat in flax-water mixture.
- Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. I usually get about halfway with my electric mixer, but after that it'll be too thick for anything but a wooden spoon.
- Press the dough into about four disks (so they warm up faster), wrap in plastic wrap or put in sandwich bags and chill for at least 1 hour.
To cookie:
- Take one of your disks and roll it out on a floured surface. You should flour your hands and the rolling pin, too. Keep rolling until it's around 1/4 of an inch thick everywhere. Go under the dough with one of those long, thin, narrow spatulas periodically so it doesn't stick.
- Cut out the cookies! You can find some fun cookie cutters, or if you're ambitious you can cut some out by hand. Try to pack the cuts close together so you have as little leftover dough as possible. (Every time you reroll it, it gets tougher).
- Collect the extra dough into a pile and put it back in the fridge.
- Repeat 1-3 for the other three disks, if desired.
- Repeat 1-3 except using the leftover dough. Keep rolling until you feel like you have a small enough amount left over to eat raw (no egg, remember?) Preheat the oven to 350F at some point.
- Your spatula might be helpful in getting the cookies on your ungreased cookie sheet.
- Bake for 8-10 minutes.
For the icing:
- Sift the powdered sugar to get the lumps out, then add vanilla. Add milk or water a tablespoon at a time until the frosting is a desirable consistency.
- Divide frosting into bowls. Add desired food coloring to each. Keep it covered with a damp cloth so it doesn't dry out.
