Vegan's Day

Holiday Gingerbread Cookies

Now that it's the holiday season, I've become completely obsessed with baking cookies. Hm... there's something about turning on the ondol floor heating, sipping a mug of minty hot chocolate, and listening to some naughty Christmas dubstep, that just makes me want to dance around and bake cookies. Lemon drop cookies, chai snickerdoodles, pecan shortbread cookies, chocolate cherry cookies... I've posted a bunch of pics on my Facebook page, but I'll try to also share some of the recipes here over the next week or so. Get ready for some cookie porn, y'all!

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First up, a holiday classic: gingerbread men!

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For these, I slightly modified Isa's wonderful Gingerbread Cut-Out Cookies recipe on the PPK by reducing the sugar and oil slightly, and added about 1 Tbs of fresh ground ginger for some extra spicy oomph.

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Here's the recipe with my modifications:

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Gingerbread Cut-Out Cookies
(adapted from Isa's recipe)

1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup + 2Tbs sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup plain soymilk
1Tbs fresh grated ginger

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

spice blend:
1/2 teaspoon each ground nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger

In a large bowl whisk together oil sugar, molasses, soymilk, and fresh grated ginger. In a separate bowl, sift all the dry ingredients together, and then add to the wet ingredients. Mix til you get a stiff dough. Wrap in plastic and chill for at least an hour. When you are ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350F. Roll out the dough to about 1/4 inch thick and cut into shapes with cookie cutters. Poke holes for eyes with a chopstick and make smiley mouths with the edge of a teaspoon. Bake for 8 minutes for softer gingerbread cookies, and up to 11 minutes for crispier ones. Remove from oven and let cool on rack, before digging in~

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Poor guy got decapitated. T'was a swift execution.

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The only problem with trying so many cookie recipes is that I end up with way more sweets than I can eat myself, so I've been sharing them with friends and sneaking extra random cookies into orders I get from the bake shop. hehe. Sharing the love, but also indulging my compulsion to bake. Win-win!

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And check out my hand-painted cookie gift boxes. :) Oh what fun~