Cinnamon stars are one of my favourite Christmas cookies! Believe it or not, you can easily make them vegan and they taste exactly the same as the ones with eggs! The secret ingredient is aquafaba (chickpea water). That may sound strange at first ..to be honest I was very sceptical before I tried it for the first time. But aquafaba acts exactly like eggwhite if you whip it up! And together with all the powdered sugar it doesn’t taste like chickpeas either. So all you need is a can of cooked chickpeas. Drain them, catch the water and it’s ready to use.
This recipe is not refined-sugar-free! I tried substituting the powderd sugar with powdered erythrit last year but that turned out super weird! I can’t think of any healthy powdered sugar substitute that works as well as refined powdered sugar and tastes as good. So I thought it’s better to enjoy them as a treat that tastes amazing and exactly the same as the non-vegan original instead of creating something that’s perfectly healthy but not nearly as delicious. All my recipes are refined-sugar-free and kinda healthy but I’ll make an exception for some of the Christmas Cookies :). It’s only Christmas once a year anyways.
Okay, rant over! Let’s get to the recipe:
Ingredients
- 200g ground almonds or half almonds, half hazelnuts
- 1tbsp cinnamon
- 60g aquafaba (1 can chickpeas)
- 125g powdered sugar
- a few drops lemon juice
Directions
- Fill the ground almonds and hazelnuts into a bowl together with the cinnamon.
- Drain the chickpeas and catch the liquid (aquafaba). Measure 60g aquafaba and fill it into a bowl. Add a couple drops lemonjuice and whip it up with a mixer. Whip until you can turn the bowl around without anything falling out.
- Now gradually sieve (!) the powdered sugar on top of the aquafaba faum and keep mixing.
- Add about 100-120g of the faum to the bowl with the ground nuts and fold it in. If the dough is too dry, add more of the faum, if it’s too sticky add more ground nuts. But the dough will stay slightly sticky. Set the leftover faum aside in the fridge.
- Sprinkle your baking-board with ground nuts (instead of flour) and roll the dough out with a rolling pin (about 1cm).
- Prepare a little bowl filled with water. Start cutting out stars with cookie cutters and place them in the water bowl between ever 2-3 stars. You can alter cookie cutters if you have more than one. That way the dough stars won’t stick to the cookie cutters as much! Place the stars on a baking tray, lined with baking paper.
- Now spread the rest of the faum mixture on top of the cinnamon stars (I always place a little dollop on top of the stars and then spread it with the back of a teaspoon). If you still have some of the faum left, just place it on the baking paper in dollops and bake it with the stars.
- Preheat the oven to 130-140Ā°C / 270-280Ā°F and bake the cinnamon stars for about 30 minutes. Keep an eye on them and take them out before they get brown!
- Let them cool down and enjoy š
