Vegan Gingerbread Cookies

You wouldn’t even know these yummy, semi-soft gingerbread cookies contain no dairy.

22⁄3 cups all-purpose flour,

plus extra for rolling 1½ teaspoons baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon ground ginger ½ teaspoon ground cloves ½ teaspoon salt

½ cup molasses

½ cup melted coconut oil ½ cup demerara sugar, coconut sugar or Sugar in the Raw Turbinado sugar ¼ cup unsweetened almond

milk or rice milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract Vegan Cream Cheese Icing

(recipe follows)

Instructions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift dry ingredients together into a large mixing bowl. Whisk together the oil, molasses, sugar, milk and vanilla extract. Mix wet ingredients into dry, using a whisk, an electric hand mixer, or your hands, until uniform. Flatten dough into a disk and refrigerate, wrapped in plastic wrap, for 30 minutes or overnight.

Dust a clean surface with flour. Roll the dough out till it’s a scant ¼ inch thick. Cut into desired shapes or just make them round.

Spray baking pan. Bake cookies for 8 minutes, or until the edges are just browning. Use spatula to remove them from baking pan. Cool. Decorate.

Makes about 3 dozen cookies

Vegan Cream Cheese Icing ½ cup (1 stick) vegan butter,

room temperature

1 (8 ounce) container vegan cream cheese, slightly softened (such as Tofutti, out of fridge for 1 hour)

3-5 cups (300-500 grams) sifted organic powdered sugar

Instructions: To a large mixing bowl, add softened softened butter and beat or whisk vigorously to combine. Then add vegan cream cheese and mix again until creamy and smooth. (We used a hand mixer for this.)

Add sifted powdered sugar in 1 cup (100 grams) increments until thick and spreadable and to desired sweetness. You want this frosting to be pretty thick so it won’t slide around — we used a little more than 5 cups.

You will have leftover frosting; it will stay fresh up to 5 days in the fridge. For fine decorative lines, put in plastic bag and cut a tiny piece of a corner open and squeeze icing out. Make sure it is chilled.

Makes 2 cups