Kids Dish

We had the horde plus one (another old high school friend visiting from Perth) over for a massive Christmas barbecue yesterday - our first BBQ of the season thanks to the bizarre “it’s either fire-ban hot or there’s snow on the mountain” weather we’ve been having this summer.

For the occasion, I made my super brilliant vegie burger recipe (1 packet of frozen spinach, one tin of chick peas, 1 sweet potato, cubed, steamed and mashed, all Ba-Mixed up together with an egg, chaped into balls and floured) and a third gingerbread recipe, this one entirely my own.

Mother of the Horde and the Littlest Hordelet (19 months) are both trying to do a three week non-dairy regime for testing purposes, which is a hell of a thing to try and do over Christmas (apparently they both collapsed over Christmas anyway and had to start again). Mother of the Horde is also a long term Doctor Who fanatic, much like myself, and is raising her children with an appropriate degree of dalek fetish.

She was excited to see my gingerbread daleks, but even more excited to see the dairy free gingerbread daleks I had provided for her and all the kids (if one child at a party is dairy free they kind of all have to be, because of food swapping and general filching/mooching). She agreed with me totally that gingerbread daleks should be an iconic element of all of our future Christmases.

Anyway, without further ado:

Tansy’s Dairy Free/Low Fat Gingerbread
(appropriate for gingerbread people, daleks and other cookie cutter shapes)

Ingredients:
120g pureed apple
1 tablespoon oil (I used Canola but a nut oil would work really nicely here)
1 egg, lightly beaten
3 cups self raising flour
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground ginger (lash out on the good stuff, people, from a spice or health food shop)
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 cup of plain flour and extra for dusting/rolling
(optional second egg for eggwash brushing)
(optional icing sugar, lemon, currants, almond slivers, etc.)

Instruction:

Pre-heat oven to º165C (or º325 F) and line two trays with baking paper.

Mix the apple, oil & egg into a mixing bowl with the self raising flour, sugar and ground ginger.

Heat the golden syrup for about 45 secs in the microwave, then add to mixture.

Stir in the cup of plain flour in stages, to get your dough to a properly doughy consistency.

Knead until smooth and pliable. You might want to chill the dough for up to an hour. Roll dough out to about one inch thickness, depending on biscuit preference, and cut into shapes with cookie cutters.

An extra egg can be beaten & brushed over shapes with a pastry brush - if you don’t do this, the lack of butter in the recipe means they will turn out a little pale rather than golden.

Bake for approx 10-12 minutes.

You can either decorate the shapes with dried fruit and nuts before baking (pressing it into the raw dough) or with piped icing afterwards. Or just eat it plain.