Making these vegan gingerbread cookies signals my first foray into the world of molasses.
And…I found it weird! This is probably no surprise to you if you’re familiar with this ingredient – it is weird right?
Like really weird.
It looks a lot like date syrup, which is a syrup I use a lot, as it’s awesome, and made from dates and nothing but dates. But aside from looks, there is no other similarity. Date syrup is very sweet, whereas molasses…. is not.
It’s not just that it’s not very sweet, it’s that it’s got the weirdest taste to it.
The good thing is that molasses in gingerbread cookie batter does the job amazingly well. Going in as an ingredient molasses is quite weird, but once baked into something, it adds something pretty great to the flavor!
These gingerbread cookies came out fabulously well and were so easy too.
I adapted a recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction in order to make it vegan and I took a few other shortcuts to make sure that I didn’t have to take too much time in making these.
I am always looking for shortcuts. In this case I didn’t want to chill the dough for a couple of hours before baking, I just wanted to mix the dough and then bake the cookies!
So I took some shortcuts and they worked! Yay!
So these gingerbread cookies are super quick. Just 20 minutes to prepare and 15 minutes to bake.
Some say you can bake them in 10 minutes, but I’m a fan of the crispier cookie.
If you want yours to be more on the soft side, then you can take them out the oven after 10 minutes.
The main time consuming factor in these cookies is rolling out the dough and cutting out the gingerbread men.
It doesn’t take long, but that’s really the only reason the prep takes 20 minutes rather than 10 or 15.
And then there’s decorating them.
Of course this step is completely optional. This was my first attempt at decorating cookies and I have to admit to not being very successful. I had to hand the job over to Jaye who is much more steady-handed when it comes to the ‘fine arts’ of putting eyes and mouths onto cookies.Ā 
Even so, some of these guys look a bit psycho!
I hope you’ll love these vegan gingerbread cookies! They are:
- Festive and fun
- Perfectly crispy on the outside
- Soft and deliciously chewy on the inside
- Infused with ginger goodness
- Easy to make!
If you have a few kiddos around, make these with them. My niece was not into the flavor too much (I think I probably wasn’t big on ginger either when I was 6), but she LOVED the look of these guys!
So whaddaya think of these vegan gingerbread cookies? Let me know in the comments! Rate the recipe and let me know how it turned out if you made them!
Tag me #lovingitvegan on instagram if you take any photos, I’d love to see them!
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Vegan Gingerbread Cookies
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Prep Time: 20 mins - Cook Time: 15 mins
- Total Time: 35 mins
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Yield: 16 -
Category: Dessert, Cookies, Baking -
Cuisine: Vegan
Print Recipe
Pin RecipeDescription
Festive and fun vegan gingerbread cookies. These gingerbread men are crisp on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside and packed with ginger, cinnamon and brown sugar flavor.
Ingredients
For the Gingerbread Men:
- 1/4 cup (56g) Vegan Butter
- 1/2 cup (100g) Brown Sugar
- 1/3 cup (100g) Unsulphured Molasses*
- 1 Flax Egg
- 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 2 cups (250g) All Purpose Flour
- 1 tsp Baking Soda
- 1/4 tsp Salt
- 2 tsp Ground Ginger
- 2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp Allspice
- 1/4 tsp Ground Cloves
For the Decorating Frosting:
- 1 cup (120g) Powdered (Icing) Sugar
- 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1 Tbsp Soy Milk
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350Ā°F (180Ā°C)
- Add the vegan butter and brown sugar to an electric mixing bowl and cream together.
- Prepare your flax egg by mixing 1 Tbsp Flaxseed Meal with 3 Tbsp Hot Water and allowing to sit for a minute.
- Add the molasses, vanilla and flax egg to the electric mixer and beat together with the vegan butter and brown sugar.
- Sift the flour into a bowl and add the baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, allspice and cloves and mix together.
- Add all the dry ingredients into the mixing bowl containing the wet ingredients and mix into a thick batter.
- Flour a surface and your hands very generously and transfer the cookie dough onto the baking surface. Roll it into a ball, adding flour as needed so it doesn’t stick.
- Roll out with a rolling pin to around a 1/4 inch thick and cut out some gingerbread men. Dip your cookie cutter in flour each time so it doesn’t stick. Move the gingerbread men to a parchment lined baking tray.
- Gather the scraps of dough, form into a ball and roll out again, cutting out more men.
- Don’t be shy to add more flour each time, this dough can be quite sticky and you need it not to be as you roll it, so add flour as needed. Any excess flour on the gingerbread cookies will bake off.
- Repeat this process until you have used all the dough.
- Place into the oven and bake for 15 minutes.
- After 15 minutes remove from the oven and allow to cool completely before decorating.
- When you’re ready to decorate, mix the decorating frosting ingredients together. It should be quite thick, but when you stir it into a peak, it should hold it’s shape for a bit before melting back down and should be quite sticky.
Notes
*I used Grandma’s Molasses brand.
*Nutritional information is for 1 cookie of 16, without frosting decoration.
*The number of gingerbread men you’ll get from this recipe depends largely on the size of your cookie cutter.
*Weigh your flour for accurate results.
*If you have accidentally used too much flour and/or the brand of vegan butter you have used has a lower water content, you may end up with a dough that is too crumbly – in this instance, add in a small amount of non-dairy milk until you get the right consistency of dough that you see in the pictures/video.
*Adapted from Sally’s Baking Addiction
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 Cookie (of 16)
- Calories: 117
- Sugar: 10.8g
- Sodium: 142mg
- Fat: 1.9g
- Saturated Fat: 0.3g
- Carbohydrates: 23.3g
- Fiber: 0.8g
- Protein: 1.7g
Keywords: vegan gingerbread cookies
Such a lovely idea for a gift at Christmas!
★★★★★
I used your beautiful gingerbread cookies to get into the spirit of christmas that’s for sure. They were delightful to look at and delightful to eat. I even sent some to my child’s teacher, who said they were amazing. Thanks for a great recipe!
★★★★★
Just used this recipe tonight and worked out amazing!
Iām a fan of a more spicier gingerbread so this worked out great.
★★★★★
Awesome Marina! Thanks for sharing! š
Hi,
can I use coconut oil in this recipe?
Thanks
Hi Greeta, I haven’t tried it but a few others have switched coconut oil for vegan butter in some other cookie recipes of mine with success, so it’s definitely worth a shot!
Do you think I could melt the vegan butter and mix it with the sugar with a whisk? I don’t have an electric hand mixer…
I just received a comment from someone who made our chocolate cookies and didn’t have a mixer and did it all by hand. Don’t melt the butter, just use arm power to beat it as best you can. There are also quite a couple of other wet ingredients in this recipe (flax egg, molasses), so it should be quite okay without an electric mixer and not too hard at all. But make sure that butter is quite creamy with the sugar before you add the other wet ingredients in. All the best!
Okay thank you, I’ll try it out!
Hi! Making these tomorrow, does the dough need to chill at all in the fridge? Need to know if I need to make tomorrow or today! Thank you!
I don’t chill the dough on these, so you’re fine to make them the day of. š
Alison,
These gingerbread cookies turned out perfect, thank you for this recipe!
★★★★★
Awesome! Thanks so much for sharing! š
Hi, these sound amazing! Iām not a fan of flax. Could I use something different in its place?
You could use a chia egg which is made the same way as a flax egg except it uses chia instead of flax. Or you could leave it out and then add in a little non-dairy milk instead, if you do it this way I would wait until the end and then add in only as much non-dairy milk as needed to get the right dough consistency. 3 Tablespoons of water goes into a flax egg but it does thicken up a little due to the flax, it becomes gloopy, so you may not need a full 3 Tablespoons of non-dairy milk to replace it, maybe 2 would be enough.
Hi! The recipe looks great! I’m think I’ll try it with my kids. I was disappointed by the ads on your page though. The whole bottom of my screen is full of pictures of raw chicken, an ad for Tyson meat I guess. Wish there was a way you could tailor your ads more towards your vegan-friendly audience. Thanks!
Hi Marelana, yes it’s difficult to control because everyone sees different ads, it’s supposed to be based on the user, so each user will see different ads, and of course errors happen! And sometimes bad ads get through as well that are quite inappropriate for anyone. It’s rare but it does happen. When you see something inappropriate to you, then it would be great if you hit the ‘report this ad’ button and report it. Thanks!
Can I use a gluten free flour? (I like using Bob mills 1 to 1 gluten free flour).
I haven’t tried this recipe as gluten-free but in theory that should be fine. Gluten-free flours require more moisture sometimes (at least with cakes) so I’m not sure if they might turn out a bit dry, but I would hope not, and if so, perhaps using a bit more vegan butter to compensate. Let us know how they turn out! š
This recipe is fantastic! I just made this and the dough had the perfect consistency to roll out and cut. The vegan icing turned out great too! After icing, I gave the cookies to my family and friends and they loved it very much. They all commented that the cookies were crunchy on the outside and soft and sweet in the inside. So Delicious !! š
★★★★★
Fantastic! Thanks so much for posting and your review! š
Mine is really crumbly and I followed the recipe. Anything I should add? Can I add soy milk?
Yes, you can add some soy milk to get it to the right consistency.
We followed this recipe as is and I have a very happy little girl who has yummy cookies for her and Santa!!!! Thank you so much!
★★★★★
That’s wonderful! So happy to hear! Thanks for posting! š
Can I use bread flour or whole wheat flour (or a combo of both) instead of all-purpose flour?
Hi Linda, it’s not something I’ve tried, and from what I can find out, if you use bread flour the cookies should be fine, but will come out differently to what you would expect with all purpose, they might be coarser, chewier and crispier.
These cookies were absolutely perfect. The non-vegans in my family could not tell that they where vegan. Good job on the recipe! We all loved it!
★★★★★
I meant *were*. Sorry.
That is awesome! Thanks for posting Holly! š
Hi, this recipe looks great. Iām in the UK and can only find the dry molasses (like sugar). Would this work?
Thanks!
★★★★★
Hi Emma, I don’t have experience with dry molasses at all but from what I’ve been able to find out, you should be able to substitute 3/4 of the amount, so since we used 100g liquid molasses, you would use 75g molasses sugar. If it ends up that your dough is too crumbly then you might need to add a dash of soy milk so that you get the right consistency. I would definitely test this before you need to make these for anything important, as it would be a bit of an experiment. If you are able to order from Amazon UK though, I did find a brand of liquid molasses there.
Great, thank you so much!
★★★★★