Vegan Halloween Ginger Biscuits

Happy Halloween!

A surprise blog post here (a surprise for me as well).

It's Halloween and I'm baking these vegan gingerbread biscuits again; this time for my housemates here in Falmouth. Tonight we're dressing up and doing a bit of pumpkin carving so I thought I'd add to the festivity by baking these bad boys again.

A few of you asked for the recipe to these vegan ginger biscuits, and while there are plenty of variations online, this is how I chose to make mine. Despite the stigma, baking for vegans really isn't as complicated as it seems. It's often just a case of substituting something like butter for a dairy free alternative, like in this recipe.

Here's how I made them:

Ingredients:

- 175 grams of plain flour

- 1 teaspoon of baking powder

- 2 teaspoons of ground ginger

- 1 teaspoon of cinnamon

- 60 grams of vitalite butter (a dairy butter can also be used if you're not making them vegan)

- 90 grams of brown sugar

- 1 tablespoon of olive oil

- 2 tablespoons of golden syrup

Icing (optional)

- 125 grams icing sugar

- 15ml warm water

(I mean, do I really need to tell you how to make icing out of icing sugar?)

Method:

(Tried to make this as simple as possible)

1. Sieve the flour into a large bowl

2. Mix in the ginger, cinnamon and baking powder

3. Break up the butter into chunks and gradually mix it into the dry ingredients with your fingers until you get a breadcrumb like texture (I find pinching it works best)

4. Stir in the sugar

5. In a separate dish or jug stir together the olive oil and golden syrup

6. Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and mix together with your fingers until a dough forms (add a bit of water if the mixture isn't sticking together)

7. When a ball of dough forms, clingfilm it and stick it in the fridge for 15 minutes

8. Pre-heat the oven to 170 C and line two baking trays with greaseproof paper

9. After 15 minutes of chilling, on a floured surface, roll out the dough to an even thickness and start cutting out your biscuits with cutters (I used my Halloween cutters for these specific biscuits but any cutters will do or just roll them into balls and flatten them)

10. Place the individual biscuits onto the lined baking trays (make sure you leave a big enough gap between each biscuit)

11. Keep re-rolling out leftover dough until all of the dough has been used up

12. Bake for 10-12 minutes (or until they start to turn golden brown)

13. Transfer onto a cooling rack and wait for the biscuits to cool before icing them

Ice them however you want, or not at all, I left some un-iced and they were just as good. The icing certainly made them look more halloween-y, however, if it's just a vegan gingerbread biscuit recipe you're looking for, I'd lose the icing.

This time around I experimented a bit - oh dear. I made a ginger icing to spread on top, which after having a little taste, I think I actually prefer to the basic icing.

Here is the recipe for the ginger icing:

Ingredients:

- 4 tablespoons of Vitalite butter

- 4 teaspoons of golden syrup

- 2 teaspoons of ground ginger

- 1 cup of icing sugar

Method:

1. Melt the butter, golden syrup and ginger together in a pan and stir

2. Take the mixture off the heat and sieve in the icing sugar

3. Mix until smooth

4. Spread evenly on top of cooled biscuits

Here is a literal "here are some I made earlier" moment as these are the biscuits I made today for halloween following this recipe!

Hope everyone enjoys their Halloween and I'll be back on Sunday for a new post!