These vegan mini iced gingerbread muffins are a different take on the traditional Christmas gingerbread, and small enough for party food.
Having given up on finding any sparkly sugar decorations in the shops that didn’t contain titanium dioxide (E171), I decided to make my own by mixing a few drops of water into a spoonful of granulated sugar. Once you let it dry out again, it can be crumbled into little crystalline clumps – pretty basic as cake decorations go, but when the light catches them they do glitter like ice crystals on the snow-white water icing.
The spice mixture includes ginger, of course, but also cardamom, which has been valued in India for centuries for health benefits that include lowering blood pressure. For the best flavour grind your own cardamom as the pre-ground variety never seems to have as much taste.
As an alternative, more fragrant topping, you could sprinkle a little ground cardamom mixed with sugar over the white icing.
The recipe will make around thirty-six mini muffins like those pictured. It works just as well for full-sized muffins (making around twelve), but you need to increase the baking time by five minutes or more.
Vegan Mini Iced Gingerbread Muffins…
Ingredients
- 50 ml blackstrap molasses
- 50 ml golden syrup
- 100 ml light olive or other mild oil
- 100 g light muscovado sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 140 ml soya or other non-dairy milk
- 1 tsp cider vinegar
- 160 g white self-raising flour
- 160 g wholemeal self-raising flour
- 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp ginger
- 1 tsp ground cardamom
- pinch of cloves
- 3 chunks of preserved stem ginger (crystallised ginger will do)
for the icing
- 60-80 g icing (confectioner’s) sugar
- granulated sugar
Method
- Set the oven to 200°C/395°F and line muffin tins to make three dozen mini muffins or one dozen large muffins.
- Stir the cider vinegar into the milk to allow it to curdle.
- In a large bowl, mix the molasses, syrup, oil and sugar until evenly combined.
- Whisk the vanilla and the milk mixture into the molasses mixture.
- In a separate bowl, sift together the flours, baking soda and spices.
- Chop the stem ginger chunks quite finely and then stir these, with the four mixture, into the liquid ingredients until just combined. Don’t over stir.
- Transfer the mixture to the muffin cases (using two teaspoons for mini muffins) filling the cases approximately three-quarters full.
- Bake for around fifteen minutes, until they are well-risen and the tops have started to brown.
- Allow to cool completely before icing.
- For the icing, simply put around 60-80g of icing sugar into a bowl and stir in cold water one teaspoon at a time until the mixture is thick enough to drip very slowly off a teaspoon but not run down the sides of the muffins.
- For the sugar crystal decoration, mix a few drops of cold water into a table spoonful of granulated sugar and then spread it on a saucer to dry.
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