Make Vegan Gingerbread

This is a recipe for a completely vegan loaf cake that has quite high protein content. When this gingerbread is taken out of the oven, 100 grams of it should have 219 kcal and 12 g of protein. Making of this cake, while quite simple in principle, as it only requires mixing of some powders with water and baking resulting dough, is actually quite unusual, because large amount of water is required and gingerbread must spend large amount of time in hot oven. If this loaf cake is to become staple of a vegan diet, then care must be taken to supplement the diet with vitamin B12 and other essential nutrients. Carbon footprint of plant-based proteins is few times lower than animal-based proteins.

Ingredients

• 4 cups (500 g) of wholemeal rye flour (type 2000)
• 2½ cups (300 g) of corn flour
• 1½ cups (200 g) of soy protein isolate
• 1¼ cups (250 g) of granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons (10 g) of salt
• 1 tablespoon (15 g) of baking soda
• 1½ tablespoons (20 g) of cocoa powder
• 1½ tablespoons (20 g) of store-bought gingerbread spice mix that was 25% cinnamon, 6.2% ginger, and also contained cloves, nutmeg, coriander, cardamom, black pepper, allspice and brown sugar (amount of the spices was quite conservative; you can add individual spices instead of premade mix)
• around 1½ quarts (1.4 L) of water

Steps

1. Weigh the dry ingredients. Put bowl on scale and start pouring powders inside, while measuring their mass. Make sure that you pour portion of rye and corn flours, then remaining ingredients, and finally rest of the flours, so that better mixing is achieved. During pouring, when you are close to the desired mass, pour very slow and gently, because otherwise you may put too much of an ingredient.
2. Mix the dry ingredients. When all dry ingredients are inside the bowl, mix them all thoroughly with a blunt end knife (or other utensil that you have at hand). Take the bowl out the scale, so that doesn't break anything.
3. Combine the water into the dry ingredients. Start pouring water to the bowl and mixing it with appropriate utensil (knife in my case). Hold the bowl at 45° angle with one hand and mixing lower portion of the bowl’s contents with the other one, making small rotary movements with the wrist. From time to time bowl itself is rotated in small increments, so all the contents can be mixed. When your knife gets sticky with dough, you can clean it with other utensil (for example a fork).
   • Kneading of the dough should also be possible. Less water will be used then and baking process itself will require less time.
4. Preheat your oven to 200 °C (392 °F).
5. Transfer the dough to a tray. Place a rack or a tray on a flat surface next to a bowl. Cover top of it with baking paper. Pour dough on the baking paper, pushing dough with knife will help to overcome viscosity. If some dry powder remains at the bottom, add small amount of water and stir contents of the bowl. You should be able to form two loafs from the amount of ingredients stated above. When loafs are ready, you can use the scissors to cut out unnecessary baking paper located around the loafs.
6. Bake the gingerbread. Once oven has reached right temperature, put tray or rack inside and wait. Wait for 1 hour and 55 minutes and turn off the oven (such long baking time is necessary, otherwise interior of the gingerbread wont be able to heat up enough). After the baking process is done, you can open oven from time to time, so that moisture can escape. Wipe any excessive water that condensed inside the oven.
   • Be careful not to put loafs too close to heating elements, or they may be burned.
7. Take the gingerbread out of the oven. After few additional hours in slowly cooling oven, you should be able take the loafs out (but if you are in a hurry probably nothing bad will happen if you will take them out sooner, just be careful not to burn your skin).
8. Serve.
   • Consider spreading jam or preserve on a slice of gingerbread to enhance the taste.

Warnings

• Ingredients used in this recipe contain gluten and potentially other substances that may be harmful for a portion of human population. You bake it and eat it at your own risk.

Things you'll need

• Parchment baking paper
• Large bowl
• Knife
• Fork
• Small plate for holding knife and fork
• Scissors
• Kitchen scale
• Oven with a rack or a tray
• Sink, faucet, washing up liquid and some paper towels / rags for cleaning up after yourself