Would Christmas even be Christmas without gingerbread? Well, that may be a bit extreme, but these delightful spicy cookies are always centre stage in our house at Christmas and each year I try a new incarnation and this year's may be the cutest of them all.
I was grabbing a coffee in the Pret nearest my office the other day and spied the Melvin the melting snowman gingerbread cookies on the counter and thought, you know what, we need a friendly version of these! And why not make the friendly version, small and cute at the same time?
Ok, the little ones are a tad more fiddly and you need to use cake decorations for the buttons (rather than Jelly Tots for a large snowman) but they do look super cute and since the icing adds to the sweetness, little is maybe just the right size for a melted snowman!
I have used variations of this gingerbread recipe for many years and despite trying others, this is the one I always come back to. The dairy-free cream cheese adds to the texture, creating a wonderful soft and moreish gingerbread, which can also become a crunchy cookie (such as you might buy in a supermarket bakery) with just a couple more minutes cooking.
I've used Dandies vegetarian marshmallows for this recipe but Freedom Mallows are also a great vegetarian option.
To make larger snowman cookies just use a bigger cutter, bake for 10-12 minutes and top with large marshmallows, more icing and Jelly Tots.
Mini Melted Snowman Cookies - egg-free and dairy-free
Makes 12-15 small, or 6-8 large
dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free, soya-free, sesame-free, vegetarian and vegan
- 50 g dairy-free margarine
- 20 g dairy-free cream cheese
- 75 g soft brown sugar
- 2 tbsp golden syrup
- 20 ml/ 1.5 tbsp dairy-free milk
- 170 g plain flour
- 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- icing sugar
- mini marshmallows (or usual size for large snowmen)
- Decorations
- 10 g chocolate (melted)
- Cream together the margarine, cream cheese, sugar, syrup and milk
- Sift in the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger. Knead into a soft dough
- On a floured surface, roll out the dough to a 1/2 cm thickness. Cut into circles – 5cm diameter for small, 8-10cm diameter for large
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Bake on a greased baking sheet for 8-10 minutes at 190℃ (8 minutes for soft, 10 for crisp)
- Cool on the sheet a little before transferring to a wire rack
- Make a stiff water icing – this is best to do by adding teaspoonfuls of water at a time to the icing sugar. Spoon or dollop a splodge of icing onto each cookie
- Top with a mini marshmallow, set to one side of the splodge. Add three 'buttons' into the splodge.
- Using melted chocolate in a piping bag, add tiny dots for eyes and mouth and to attach a little orange sprinkle for the carrot nose (Get Bake'd sprinkles are perfect for this). Finally pipe on some chocolate twig arms
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