Coffee & Chocolate Cookies (Vegan)

1. First make your chia seed egg replacer. In a small bowl, combine the chia seeds & water and mix. Pop into the fridge for 10-15 minutes to thicken & jellify.

2. Pre-heat your oven to 180^o degrees, Gas Mark 4.

3. Cream together the margarine (or butter) and sugar in a large mixing bowl until smooth. I used an electric whisk.

4. Add in the chia seed egg replacer & cocoa powder and mix together thoroughly.

5. In a separate bowl, mix together the Bambu^® powder and vanilla extract until fully dissolved and add to the chocolaty mixture.

6. Gradually add in the flour, salt and baking powder, mixing together until fully combined. Add in the almond milk a little at a time until the mixture comes together.

7. With clean hands, kneed the mixture to form a soft ball of dough.

8. Wrap the dough ball in cling-film and place in the fridge to firm up for around an hour.

9. Remove the dough from the fridge and lightly cover your clean work-surface with flour to prevent the dough from sticking.

10. Roll out to your desired thickness and using cookie cutters, firmly press into the dough and place the shapes onto a lined baking tray.

11. When you have all of the cookies ready, pop them into the oven and bake for around 8-10 minutes, checking them after 8 minutes.

12. Remove the cookies from the oven and place them onto a wire rack to cool fully before decorating! Now the fun part begins....DECORATING!

13. Lightly dust some icing sugar over your work-surface, apply your desired food colouring to the white icing and kneed. You can always add more colour if you want a deeper finish.

To get the marble effect icing (as on the pink flower cookie), apply some food colouring to the icing, kneed only a little and then roll out. This leaves an uneven coloured piece of icing, which looks lovely and show its many wonderful shades.

14. Roll out the icing and use the cookie cutters to cut out the shapes. Apply a little water to the back of the shape and place ontop of the cookie. I added little eyes using dark chocolate and a bamboo stick, edible gold glitter and gold leaf for a special touch!