Another Christmas recipe that I was desperate to create without lashings of sugar! GINGERBREAD MEN!
It’s super easy to find a nice Gingerbread man recipe online, but as Raffy is loving the story of the Gingerbread man this year, I wanted to make him some, but without all the sugar as I don’t think it’s always necessary.
This week I also created a Christmas Snowball Recipe and I included a bit on my stance on sugar in kids snacks and festive foods – check it out here if you’re interested and please know I’m not anti-sugar, I just like to provide the alternative options for those parents who are wanting them!
This recipe is great as it’s so easy to adapt – you can always add some brown sugar in place of the apple juice, which I’ve used to add a little natural sweetness as well as moisture to be able to roll it into a ball. Apple juice is fairly sweet stuff, so this recipe is by no means “Sugar Free”, but it does contain a huge amount less in comparison to all the other Gingerbread Men recipes I’ve seen!
So here goes, here is my Gingerbread men recipe….
Gingerbread Men Recipe
Ingredients:
- 125g unsalted butter or dairy free spread
- 350g plain flour
- 2 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp mixed spice
- ½ tsp bicarb soda
- 120mls apple juice
- 80g nut butter
- Optional – icing sugar, smarties, raisins for decorating
Method:
- Heat the oven to 200 degrees C
- Oil a couple of oven trays
- Mix in the butter and flour with your fingers until them make breadcrumbs.
Add the ginger, spice and bicarb of soda and stir together well - Add in the apple juice and the almond butter (you can soften the almond butter in a microwave or on the stove a little first) and mix all ingredients together well (with your hands works best). If you don’t want to use nut butter, you could always use maple syrup or honey instead of the almond butter, which will significantly increase the sugar content of the Gingerbread Men, but may be less than many recipes still. Or you can use any kind of nut butter that you have available.
- Lay some flour on a flat, clean surface and roll out the mixture until it’s about 1/2 a cm thick
- Use a gingerbread man (or anything will do) stamp to create your gingerbread men
- Lay them on the pre-greased tray and press in some raisins as eyes and buttons, if using
- Bake them for around 20mins – making sure not to over brown
- Take them out and decorate with icing sugar/smarties, if desired!
As always, please let me know if you try it by using the hashtag #SRNutritionRecipes
