Gingerbread Stars

Ingredients:

110g Dairy Free Butter, chilled and cut into cubes (I used stork 'perfect for baking')

110g Light Brown Sugar

85g Honey

2 Egg Yolks

140g Brown Rice Flour

140g Buckwheat Flour

1/2 tsp Gluten Free Baking Powder

2 tsp Ground Ginger

1/2 tsp Ground Cinnamon

For the icing

100g icing sugar

A splash of plant based milk

Directions:

Cream together the butter and sugar in a bowl with an electric hand whisk, until light and fluffy. Add in the egg yolks one by one and then the honey and beat together until it's incorporated. Measure out all the dry ingredients (Buckwheat flour, brown rice flour, stir together. Make sure they are mixed well before adding to the wet ingredients.

Sift the dry ingredients into the wet and mix by hand until the mixture becomes a smooth dough. It will first become a little like bread crumbs but keep mixing and pressing the back of the spoon against the dough to encourage the mix to come together.

Once a ball of dough has formed, divide the mixture into two balls and wrap each ball in greaseproof paper and put in the fridge for at least 1 hour to firm up.

Pre-heat your oven to Gas Mark 3, 160ºC or 320ºF. Remove from the fridge and roll out the first half on a sheet of greaseproof paper sprinkled with flour to prevent sticking, using a dusted rolling pin  roll out to ¼ inch thick.

Using a star shaped cutter start to cut the shapes into the rolled dough, don't remove the shapes just yet! Transfer the sheet onto a baking tray and allow the biscuits to firm up in the freezer for 3-5 mins. Repeat these steps for the second dough ball. Any left over dough can be kneaded briefly to bring it together and you can roll it out again and repeat the process.

When you've taken them out of the freezer use a palette knife to carefully remove each star and place onto a lined baking sheet. Bake for 6-10 mins (depending on the size of your biscuit) or until golden brown. You may bake several batches of these gingerbread stars depending on how much dough you have left over.

Transfer the gingerbread to a cooling rack and leave to cool for 10-15mins. In the meantime you can make the icing. Mix together the icing sugar and plant based milk ( I do this by eye, adding a splash of milk at a time) The icing shouldn't be too liquid (as it won't pipe well), so go slow and judge the thickness as you add the milk. Once the gingerbread have fully cooled fill a piping bag (or sandwich bag - cut off a very very small piece of the tip to create an icing bag) with the icing mix. Here's where you can get creative and decorate your gingerbread. Leave them at room temperature until the icing has set.

Enjoy!

NB. They store very well if kept in an airtight container.