Gingerbread-Orange Squares

I wanted to make something that had a crust made of gingerbread cookies so I came up with this recipe. For the filling I got the idea from the Lemon Bars recipe from Veganomicon (Buy yourself a copy if you haven’t already!), although I switched lemons to oranges and added some ginger. The cardamom-aniseed syrup tastes like Christmas, too, so this makes a great dessert for your Christmas eve dinner.

Yield: About 15 squares

Ingredients:

For the crust:

400 g/14 oz gingerbread cookies, crushed

1/2 cup soy milk

1/4 cup melted vegan margarine

Directions:

Mix all ingredients and put the mixture into a baking pan (about 9 x 13 inches) and press it firmly into an even layer. Bake it in 200 C/390 F for 10 minutes.

For the filling:

1 1/3 cups water

3 tablespoons agar flakes

1 1/4 powdered sugar

1/8 teaspoons turmeric

1/4 teaspoon ginger

2/3 cup fresh orange juice

3 tablespoons arrowroot powder

1 tablespoon grated orange zest

1/4 cup soy milk

Directions:

1. Soak the agar flakes in the water for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, squeeze the orange juice and grate the zest. Mix the arrowroot to the orange juice.
2. Boil the agar flakes for 10 minutes and then add powdered sugar, turmeric and ginger. Boil the mixture for about 3 minutes.
3. Bring the heat to medium and add the arrowroot mixture, orange zest and soy milk. Let it boil for 5 minutes or until it thickens. Remember to stirr it the whole time.
4. Pour the filling on top of the crust and let the whole thing cool down in the fridge for 2-3 hours.

For the syrup:

3/4 cup sugar

1 1/4 cups water

15 whole cardamom seeds

2 star aniseeds

2 cinnamon sticks

pinch of ginger

Directions:

Mix the ingredients and boil for about 10 minutes.

Finally, cut the gingerbread-orange layer into squares and decorate them with the syrup and some powdered sugar.

Author: Seitti. This entry was posted on Saturday, November 17th, 2007 at 10:21 am. It is filed under Desserts and Sweets, Ginger, Orange. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

This recipe (excluding the photos) is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.