GINGERBREAD BISCUITS
- 150g coconut oil, melted and cooled a little
- 125g soft dark brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 125g black treacle
- 400g plain flour
- 1 tsp bicarbonate soda
- 2 tsp ground ginger
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp ground allspice
- 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp salt
Mix the coconut oil and sugar in a freestanding electric mixer or handheld electric whisk. Add in the egg and keep mixing until the mix is smooth and airy. Add in the treacle and continue to mix until well blended in. Scrap the sides of the bowl and mix one last time.
Sieve all the dry ingredients into a separate bowl and then add gradually into the mixer until you have a dough. You will probably need to keep scraping the sides of the bowl as you go.
Put the dough on a kitchen surface and roll into a big long gingerbread draft excluder (see picture). You can make it into two shorter snakes if you like. I make it about 8cm diameter.
Wrap in clingfilm and put it in the fridge to rest for at least a couple of hours. You could leave it over night if you want.
Preheat the oven to 170°C/Gas 3. When you’re ready to bake your biscuits, take off the clingfilm and put it on a clean kitchen surface. Cut discs about 1.5cm wide. Place them on a lined baking tray and put in the oven for 10-15 minutes. The biscuits should have slightly darkened in colour but soft to the touch – you don’t want rock hard biscuits. After about 1 minute, move them onto a cooling tray so they don’t keep cooking on the hot tray.
Sneak one whilst they’re still warm, with a cup of tea.
I love having a tin of homemade biscuits in the kitchen. Not fancy biscuits. Just something that you can offer to visitor when they come round for a cuppa. Or a sweet treat to give to the children when I pick them up from school.
These are based on the gingerbread men recipe in ‘the hummingbird bakery cookbook’. I’ve made them dairy free by using coconut oil instead of butter. The reason I melt the oil is because if you put room temperature coconut oil into the mixer, you will generally get little lumps of unmixed oil in the dough. This gives a smoother dough, but it does mean when you are mixing it can look a little “flat”.
Of course you can use this recipe to make gingerbread men or other cookie shapes to decorate with icing etc. But as I said, I like to have biscuits in the house every week so this makes them simple and quick to make. What is more comforting than a ginger biscuit? And how much more wonderful is a fresh ginger biscuit that your mum/friend made that very day?
I think you could add in chocolate chips or dip one half in melted chocolate, to make them a little naughty.
Shall I put the kettle on?
the things on my plate 