Vegan Chocolate Men

Chocolate biscuits made with gingerbread man cutter and decorated with vegan marzipan, which I made myself from almond flour and rice syrup. This recipe needs further work done on it, because trying to make a rolled dough of the right consistency, I had to juggle with the ingredients a bit, but this seems to work so far:

Ingredients:

1/4 cup + 1 Tbsp sunflower oil
1/2 cup agave syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
2 cups white flour
1/3 cup (unsweetened) cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of sea salt

Method:

Mix all wet ingredients in one bowl and all dry ingredients in another (I prefer to sift my dry ingredients). Add dry ones to the wet carefully, maybe in two batches, to see that the forming dough is not going to be too dry - it will be almost impossible to adjust. If you think it's too wet for a rolled dough, add some flour. Mix everything very lightly, not pressing the dough very hard. Form few balls if you like.
Then, using a rolling pin and a cookie cutter of your choice, make biscuits and place them on a baking tray, lined with parchment paper. These biscuits shouldn't spread, but I like to refrigerate them for 15 min before baking, and they retain shape perfectly.
Bake at 170C. It's hard to say how long they will need, because it very much depends on the size of your cutters and the thickness of the biscuits you rolled. My chocolate men are rather huge, but rolled as thin as possible, and were ready within 8-9 minutes.

Vegan Oat and Raisin Biscuits with Barley Malt

This recipe had to be created because my toddler son loves biscuits. He would eat one every minute, so I had to figure out the least harmful composition of ingredients, paying a special attention to the sweetening ingredient. Barley malt syrup is one of the main sweeteners used in macrobiotic cooking, and it's good because it comes from grain.
So there's my version of classic oat & raisin biscuits.

Makes about 35 biscuits

Ingredients:
1 cup oat flakes
1 1/2 cup whole grain spelt flour
3/4 cup barley malt syrup
1/3 cup oil
2 Tbsp rice milk (or any dairy-free milk/water)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup raisins soaked and drained
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 180C and prepare a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper.
In a large bowl, mix togetrher oil, barley malt syrup and vanilla extract, add oats, flour, salt and baking powder. Look at the consistency and if you think it might do with some more moisture, add rice milk to it. Mix thoroughly until smooth. Incorporate raisins in the dough.
Then, and this is quite important - refrigerate your dough for 15 minutes, if you don't want your biscuits to spread too much. Cooling the baking tray will help too. Alternatively, you can form biscuits on the tray (taking a bit of the dough with a teaspoon and dropping on the baking sheetwith 1-2 inches between them), place the tray in the fridge, and after 15 minutes take it out and put straight into the oven.

If you like your biscuits big and flat, you can use unrefrigerated dough, but keep 3 inches between them. I have a small oven and use small trays, so I have to pack them a bit tighter together, so I prefer using refrigerated dough.

Bake for 12 minutes. They will be a bit soft but they will harden soon. Keep in the airtight container.