Vegan gingerbread sleigh

This is a bit of sequel to the gingerbread house, my sister is vegan and was coming to stay for Christmas so I couldn't have her turning up and not being able to eat any gingerbread! I initially thought to just make a mini house, but got a little bit creative and planned something a bit better- Santas sleigh!

Vegan recipes are easy to come by, however its hard to find one that is not american and so measured in cups. I really should buy some of those little measuring cups, thus remedying this dilemma, but instead I have this pretty little tea-cup to use instead...

So the recipe is as follows:

1 1/2 cups plain flour

1tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp all spice

Pinch of salt

1/3 cup of vegan butter (I used some from the "pure" range-its the same as any marg)

1/4 cup of sugar

And this is where I deviated from the recipe, I wanted my gingerbread to be really strong as I was constructing with it, so I added about a 1/3 of a cup of black treacle, which was also a really nice additional flavour.

Simply combine everything into a dough, using a bit of hot water as neccessary to get the mixture to the right consistency to roll it out. Ideally chill the dough for a while but as I was in a hurry I just got to it.

I didn't have any templates for my own little creation and couldn't be bothered drawing things out etc so I just cut the panels out free hand. It worked probably better than it should have, considering how slapdash I was being. A few scales I would have changed but it did the job!

The icing is where the vegan thing became problematic. Royal icing, that I used for the gingerbread house in my previous post, is so easy to work with, really strong and dries really quickly. However it has egg white in it so is not vegan friendly, I had to use a simply icing sugar and water mix. Icing the panels was fine, I simply piped the outline and then flooded it with a watery mix for the colour.

However the icing takes SO long to dry fully, and when getting everything to hold together was a nightmare. But I got there in the end, lots of propping things up and hoping they will set.

So here it is! I iced the reindeer and then covered him in cocoa powder, his nose is not vegan (shock!) but I couldn't resist cutting a jelly bean in half for it, it was quite satisfying. I  covered the cake board in icing and wanted to dust it with icing sugar to look like snow, like in the gingerbread house, but the icing just kept absorbing it, annoying. But overall I was pretty pleased with how it came out. Not my best work but a nice little addition for my sister, and I think she was pretty pleased with it.

Soph x