This is wonderful bonding time with grandchildren. You can keep your gingerbread tradition without butter, sugar, or eggs. Decorating with icing is an option.
Wet Ingredients
- 1 egg substitute*, (1 Tbsp ground flax + 3 Tbsp water)
- 10 oz pitted dates (about 26-28 Deglet Noor)
- ¼ cup water
- ½ cup light cooking molasses
- ¼ cup almond or nut & seed butter
- 1½ tsp vanilla
Dry Ingredients
- 2¾ cup whole wheat flour
- ½ to ¾ cup additional flour (use as needed to remove tackiness from dough)
- 1½ tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp ginger powder
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- ¼ tsp allspice
- ¼ tsp cloves
Instructions – Mixing the dough
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- In a small bowl, mix egg substitute and set aside.
- In a medium size bowl, mix the dry ingredients and set aside.
- Toss the dates with water and set aside for 30 minutes, or until soft. (It’s ideal to soak the dates overnight. I do this more like a marinade and put dates in a container with lid. Tip container upside down a few times to ensure dates on the top are moistened).
- Add dates to a food processor along with the soaking water, molasses, nut butter and vanilla. Process until well mixed then transfer contents to a large mixing bowl.
- Add about half of the flour mixture to the date mixture. Stir well to incorporate. Continue adding more flour and mixing. When the dough becomes too firm to stir, use hands to incorporate the remaining flour. If you have used up the measured flour and the dough is too tacky to form a dough ball add a light dusting of flour until the tackiness becomes manageable to form a smooth dough ball.
- The dough can be used right away but keep covered to prevent it from drying out.
Rolling Out Dough
- Break off an ample amount of dough. Lay the dough on parchment paper and flatten with hands. Take another layer of parchment paper and lay it over to top. Using a rolling pin roll, evenly roll dough until it’s about 6 mm/¼” thick. Peel the top layer of parchment paper off but leave the bottom layer of parchment paper intact. Cut out cookies and remove the excess dough from around the cut-out shapes
- Add fresh dough to the leftover dough repeat the process until all the dough has been used up.
- Bake gingerbread 12 – 14 minutes.
Notes/Tips
- Can use 2 Tbsp prune puree as an egg substitute instead of flax.
- Dough can be put in refrigerator up to 2 days.
- Dough can be frozen then thaw when ready to use.
- To prevent sticking, the dough must be sandwiched between two layers of parchment paper.
- To prevent the parchment paper from sliding, lightly moisten counter with water before laying down the parchment paper.
- Leave cookies intact on the parchment paper. Cut around shape then lay cookies on baking pan.