VegNews Guide to Vegan Gingerbread

Walk into any grocery store this time of year and you’re bound to find an abundance of peppermint-flavored treats. This is totally fine by us, but what about that other delicious holiday flavors like gingerbread? We love spices such as nutmeg, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon, and we adore the fact that these readily-available ingredients calm our gingerbread fix in everything from cookies and chocolate to gingerbread drinks to houses. Here are just a few of the ways we’ve been satisfying our craving for this seasonal spicy flavor.
 
Buy it
If it’s a heavy-on-the-ginger cookie you desire, check out the soft-baked gingerbread spice cookies by Enjoy Foods, the snappy (and very ginger-y) gluten-free ginger snaps from Dr. Lucy’s, or the sugar-coated indulgent Ginger Snapdragons by Liz Lovely. For a different take on the flavor, Way Better Snacks has created limited edition bags of slightly salty Ginger Spice-flavored sprouted tortilla chips.
 
Bake it
Some of our favorite bloggers have mastered the art of gingerbreading with gusto. Angela Liddon at Oh She Glows combined the best of both worlds in this Pumpkin Gingerbread Muffin that’s perfect for Christmas morning. Speaking of breakfast, baking a sheet of One Green Planet’s Gingerbread Cinnamon Rolls—filled with coconut sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves—is sure to impress family members. And the Gingerbread French Toast Sticks with coconut milk fondue from Hot for Food Blog make us want to bake every day until Christmas 2017.
 
Build it
Although it’s a blast, building an entire gingerbread house is as terrifying as putting together a bedframe from IKEA. Luckily, Sensitive Sweets calms the construction anxiety with its ready-to-assemble, gluten-free gingerbread house kits complete with walls, a roof, cement (aka icing), and tiny plastic trees. Need a few good men to guard the gingerbread house? Karma Baker’s got you covered. Order a dozen gingerbread men and for extra pizzaz, a variety of winter-themed sugar cookies you can use as door signs, lawn decor, or window treatments for the cookie house (that is, if they make it past your mouth moat).
 
Gift it 
Fresh-baked gingerbread cookies packed in a hand-decorated tin make a great gift, but when you don’t have time for all that, a fancy gingerbread-infused chocolate bar like the one from Askinosie works just fine. Fair trade-certified, this chocolate brand revived its seasonal favorite Gingerbread Dark Chocolate Bar, which tastes like an entire chocolate-covered gingerbread cookie and comes in a coloring book-inspired wrapper. Alternatively, gingerbread lip balm, soap, and tea make for great stocking stuffers.
 
Drink it
Saving your teeth for heartier Christmas day fare? Guzzle down gingerbread-flavored beverages instead! Our own editor and former barista Richard Bowie broke down easily-veganized drinks at Starbucks such as Chocolate Dunked Gingerbread, Gingerbread Tea Latte, and Gingerbread Latte. We won’t tell if you spike these with Kahlua, Schnapps, or bourbon. ‘Tis the season!