Who can resist the aroma of freshly baking spice biscuits (or cookies if you're in the USA)?

I created these after a request from one of the family for "a chewy biscuit", and turned to that old-fashioned pantry staple Golden Syrup to create the right chewy texture. You can substitute brown rice syrup if you prefer, and can sub out the dark brown sugar for rapadura (less processed) sugar with very similar results.

The biscuits are short because of a quick amalgamation after the flour is added, and also because wholemeal spelt flour is a brilliant, brilliant flour for baking. It adds nourishment, without having a heavy texture. It's the mainstay in all our baking these days.

All wrapped up for Christmas

Chewy & lightly spiced, they're an old fashioned favourite with a modern vegan twist

“I want to take all our best moments, put them in a jar, and take them out like cookies and savor each one of them forever.”

— crystal woods, 'write like no one is reading'

Perfect for the Christmas season, with the gingery spices, these biscuits are actually delicious any time of the year. You'll notice they don't use vegan margarine, but instead use a combination of half coconut oil (cold pressed refined so there's no coconut flavour) and half cold-pressed nut oil. Although we do make our own vegan butter for use in some recipes, for many biscuits and cakes it's much quicker and simpler to use this combination of oils straight into the mix, with excellent results.

We prefer not to use processed store-bought vegan margarine, and of course we don't use butter as all our cooking is vegan, so we're always experimenting with simple ways to use wholefoods as "direct ingredients".

As these biscuits have a fair amount of sugar in them, they're not an everyday food - but every now and then, they make the most delicious treat.