Vegan Sugar-free Gingerbread House

This Christmas I tried to make my own gingerbread house. Next time I promise I'll make it prettier, but altogether the experiment wasn't fruitless.
To be honest I didn't even bother to google how they are usually made, maybe there is a better way - I just drew a simple design and cut out walls, a base (house "floor" - a key element), and a roof from a thick paper, rolled the dough and cut the dough around the paper templates, chilled the cut-out pieces (to minimise spreading of thre dough) for 15 minutes and baked. The base was baked after the walls, which I tried on, lightly pushing them into the dough, making shallow grooves for them. It helped later to make the walls stay in place.
The roof took a bit more work - my husband made a triangle-shaped thingy from a cardboard, covered it with a piece of kitchen foil, and I placed the cut-out piece of dough on it, chilled in the fridge, and baked the whole construction, and it stayed intact.
Then I piped doors and windows with the vegan chocolate ganache, and glued everything together with the rice syrup. Then I piped little stars around seams with the ganache. As for the white cream, there was a bit of a disaster. It melted. Next time I'll use my vegan kinda perfect coconut icing, which will stay put! Finally, I dusted the roof with the powdered barley malt.

Anyway, I'm not entirely happy with this experiment, because I think the dough needs working on a bit, and the cream was not what I wanted it to be, so I won't give the recipe, because it needs further revising and practice.
Although I hope it will be ready before next Christmas :)

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.

Queen's Diamond Jubilee cake

Nothing special, simple chocolate sponge with whipped rice cream (the latter was the result of some haphazard attempt)

Ingredients (for two layers):
2 cups of soy milk
2 tsp cider vinegar
2/3 cup baking oil
1 cup agave syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 cups whole spelt flour
1 cup white spelt flour
2/3 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 bicarbonate of soda
pinch of sea salt

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and oil the cake tin.
2. Put soy milk and vinegar in a big bowl and mix with the whisk. Add the oil, agave syrup and the extracts to the milk misture, beat till nice and smooth.
3. Place a fine sieve on top of the bowl and sift in the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Mix with the whisk till no lumps remain, but try not to overmix.
4. This recipe is for two layers of the cake, so if you don't have two tins, divide all the ingredients in two and bake one after another. Bake the cake about 35 minutes, but it may depend on the oven. Check if ready putting a wooden toothpick in the middle of the cake, which should come out dry.  I'd like to note, that all ovens vary, so the aforementioned time and temperature are guidelines only.


Whipped rice cream was a bit of a random try, but as far as I can remember it was
1 carton of Rice Cuisine (200 ml)
4 Tbsp coconut flour
1 Tbsp corn starch
2 Tbsp agave syrup

Everything was just put in a beater one by one and mixed till stiff (about 2 mins). I wonder if it actually could do without corn starch, because this cream came out even stiffer than the regular dairy whipped cream. But it's not so bad, because it perfectly holds the rosettes for ever and ever. And it never melts or gets absorbed, like Soyatoo whippable cream does. Hooray.

Vegan Brownies with fresh raspberry

Just a raspberry version of my macro sugarless brownies

Ingredients:
1/2 cup of silken tofu
1/4 cup soy milk
1/2 cup grapeseed oil
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp natural vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 cup whole spelt flour
1/2 cup white spelt flour (or wheat)
1 Tbsp arrowroot
1/2 cup cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking powder
pinch of sea salt
100g of fresh raspberry (2/3 of 150g raspberry punnet)

Method:
Preheat oven to 170C. Line a small oven tray with parchment paper, covering the sides of the tray too.
Cream the tofu, milk and oil in a blender. Put the mixture in a bowl, mix in the maple syrup and the extracts.
Sift in the flours, arrowroot, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. The batter will be quite thick so mix it with a plastic spatula. When smooth, transfer it to the tray and even it out, smoothing the top. It may take only a part of your tray, depending on its size, but that's ok, you shouldn't spread it too thinly.
Bake for 30 minutes. Take the tray out of the oven and let it cool down a little before cutting the brownies' squares.

Vegan Chocolate Brownies

I think, the key to the perfect vegan brownies is silken tofu. There're many recipes for the egg- and dairy free brownies on the Web, but these are the simplest to make of all of them. I took the original recipe from Isa and Terry's book and made some adjustments as I wanted to use agave syrup instead of sugar.

The batter must be thick and very gooey. You'll need a silicon (or plastic) spatula to deal with it.

The brownies on the photo are made with walnuts and raisins - you can add 1/2 cup each of chopped walnuts and raisins to the batter in the very end. 

Ingredients:
1/2 cup of silken tofu
1/4 cup soy milk
1/2 cup grapeseed oil
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp natural vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 cup whole spelt flour
1/2 cup white spelt flour (or wheat)
1 Tbsp arrowroot
1/2 cup cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking powder
pinch of sea salt

Method:
Preheat oven to 170C. Line a small oven tray with parchment paper, covering the sides of the tray too.
Cream the tofu, milk and oil in a blender. Put the mixture in a bowl, mix in the maple syrup and the extracts.
Sift in the flours, arrowroot, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. The batter will be very thick so mix it with a plastic spatula. When smooth, transfer it to the tray and even it out, smoothing the top. It may take only a part of your tray, depending on its size, but that's ok, you shouldn't spread it too thinly.
Bake for 30 minutes. Take the tray out of the oven and let it cool down a little before cutting the brownies' squares.

Vegan Chocolate Chip Biscuits

They're classic biscuits and easy to make. Enough said :) I used Dairy free chocolate chips  and freshly ground spelt flour.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup sunflower or grapeseed oil
1/2 cup agave nectar
1/4 cup soy or rice milk
2 Tbsp arrowroot
2 1/4 cups spelt flour or whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda

 pinch of salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Method:

Preheat oven to 190C and prepare a baking tray or sheet lined with greaseproof paper.
In a large bowl, mix togetrher oil, agave and milk, mix and add arrowroot. Mix thoroughly until smooth.
Add the flour (you can do it in a few batches to make your mixing better), salt and the baking soda, mix well. Finally fold in chocolate chips.
Take a bit of the dough with a middle-sized spoon and drop on the baking sheet, making sure that there's at least 6 cm/2 inches between your biscuits.
Bake for 12 minutes, and leave them on the sheet for a little while before transferring them onto a plate.

Vegan Hazelnut Chocolate cupcake

Another cupcake recipe with the nut butter. It's very simple in decoration as well - just a drop of rice syrup or barley malt in the middle and some crushed roasted hazelnuts on top of it.

 
Makes 9 big hazelnut cupcakes (in regular muffin paper cases) or 16 small ones

Ingredients:
3/4cup soy milk
2 tsp cider vinegar
1/2 cup hazelnut butter, stirred
1/3 cup sunflower or grapeseed oil
1/2 cup agave nectar
1/4 cup barley malt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 cup wholemeal wheat or spelt flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of sea salt

Method:
Preheat oven to 170C, line a cupcake tray with paper liners.
In a small bowl, mix soy milk with the vinegar with the whisk and leave for a few minutes.
Meanwhile, in a larger bowl cream the hazelnut butter, oil, barley malt and extracts until smooth. Add the soy mixture and mix. Put a fine sieve on top of the bowl and sift in the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt, mix together, trying not to overmix.
Pour the mixture in the liners with the small ladle and place in the oven immediately.
Bake for about 28 min, checking with the toothpick put in the middle of one of the cupcakes, which should come out dry.