Ninja Bread Men

I’m (once again) a little bit late with my foodie pen pal post for this month. I’m actually still waiting for my parcel, although it is on it’s way, so a post regarding it’s content should be following shortly. But in the meantime I thought I would post the recipe for the goodies that I made for Ioanna in Greece. I sent Ioanna a package full of trears from Ireland and England and thought I should make something suitably traditional. Having just received a set of ‘Ninja’ Bread Men cookie cutters for my birthday gingerbread men seemed the obvious choice. I then stumbled across this recipe for Vegan Guinness Gingerbread over at No Meat Athlete. Having no egg replacer handy I actually turned these into a non-vegan treat by adding a couple of eggs but the original vegan recipe can be found here. And below can be found the recipe with my slight alterations, so not vegan, but still dairy free!

INGREDIENTS

235 ml Guinness

80 ml vegetable oil

100g icing sugar

60 ml molasses

250 g flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 teaspoons ground ginger

Put the Guinness into a small saucepan and simmer gently until reduced by half.

Sift all of the dry ingredients together into a large bowl.

In a separate bowl mix together the molasses, oil, eggs and 60ml of the reduced Guinness mixture until well combined.

Stir the wet ingredients into the dry until a firm dough is produced (you will probably need to get your hands dirty to bring the dough together).

Wrap the dough in cling film and place in the fridge for an hour.

In the meantime pre-heat the oven to 180°C and line a baking with non-stick baking parchment.

Roll the dough out on a well floured surface until about 2 cm thick and cut out in your desired shape (it doesn’t have to be a ninja!!). Transfer to the baking tray and bake for approximately 10 minutes until golden brown.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before removing from the tray.