This soft, moist, and completely delicious vegan gingerbread recipe makes a wonderful holiday breakfast or dessert!
The best vegan gingerbread
Try this delightful plant based recipe the next time company comes to visit.
Guests are always shocked to discover the gingerbread spice loaf is dairy free, egg free, and vegan, because it tastes exactly like traditional gingerbread from a bakery.
The comforting festive flavor and super soft texture perfectly capture all the nostalgic magic of the holidays.
It’s secretly packed with iron and nutrition, at just 100 calories per slice. Plus leftovers freeze well too.
Also try this holiday Vegan Pumpkin Bread
Healthy gingerbread loaf cake
In addition to containing no eggs or butter, the fully vegan gingerbread recipe can also be gluten free, soy free, refined sugar free, and oil free.
Thanks to the powerhouse blackstrap molasses, each slice gives you close to ten percent of the RDA for fiber, calcium, and iron.
It includes very little saturated fat, almost three grams of protein, and no cholesterol.
Most importantly, this vegan version is just as moist and spicy sweet as classic gingerbread, so you never feel like you are sacrificing at all.
You may also like this Gingerbread Latte Recipe
Easy vegan gingerbread recipe video
Watch the step by step recipe video above.
Vegan gingerbread ingredients
You will need flour, cinnamon, ground ginger, allspice, salt, white or apple cider vinegar, sugar, plant based milk of choice, flax seeds, baking soda, and molasses.
If you are a raisin lover like I am, stir half a cup of raisins into the gingerbread batter along with the dry ingredients.
Flour – The recipe works with spelt flour, white flour, or gluten free all purpose flour. Oat flour works but yields a denser result.
I have not tried the recipe with whole wheat flour, coconut flour, almond flour, or any other flour not listed and therefore cannot recommend any of these substitutions.
Milk – To keep the recipe vegan, go with your favorite nondairy milk. I like rich coconut milk or low calorie almond milk. You may also use soymilk or oat milk.
Sugar – Choose white sugar, unrefined coconut sugar, or even brown sugar. For a lower sugar vegan quick bread, opt for xylitol.
Flax seeds – Thanks to their binding properties, Flax Eggs are a great substitute for eggs in vegan baking.
Both health food stores and regular grocery stores like Safeway, Trader Joe’s, and Target should sell ground flaxmeal.
If you can only find whole flax seeds, simply grind them yourself in a food processor before beginning with the recipe.
Oil – For those wishing to use oil instead of additional milk of choice, I recommend sunflower, coconut, or vegetable oil.
Be sure your milk and other ingredients are not cold if you add coconut oil, because it hardens when chilled.
This is actually the oil free version in the photos, and you cannot tell at all. While baked goods without oil are often gummy or dry, the molasses here keeps this quick loaf moist even without the extra fat.
What type of molasses?
Blackstrap molasses is my preference for its myriad health benefits, including its high calcium and iron content.
(I also love this sweetener in my easy recipe for Bran Muffins.)
If you cannot find blackstrap molasses or prefer the slightly sweeter taste of regular light or dark molasses, either of these is fine to use instead.
While substituting pure maple syrup, agave, or another liquid sweetener might yield a delightful spice cake, it will lose some of the familiar classic gingerbread flavor.
So I do not recommend swapping out the molasses in this recipe.
For a low carb loaf, try this Almond Flour Banana Bread
Frosting options
Serve the gingerbread unfrosted or topped with almond butter, Coconut Butter, powdered sugar and strawberries, vanilla frosting, or Vegan Cream Cheese.
I frosted the vegan gingerbread loaf in the pictures with the dairy free cream cheese icing recipe written out in my post on Vegan Cinnamon Rolls.
This fluffy frosted gingerbread was the star of an entirely vegan brunch event I recently hosted for the holidays.
All fifteen slices disappeared within minutes, and both vegan and non vegan friends asked me for the recipe.
So I highly recommend serving the gingerbread at your next get together of friends or family, because it is a big crowd favorite.
Note: If you are looking to bake cookies instead of a gingerbread loaf, be sure to try this recipe for chewy homemade Vegan Gingerbread Cookies.
How to make vegan gingerbread
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and grease an eight inch square baking pan or a nine by five inch loaf pan.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the milk of choice, oil, vinegar, molasses, and flax meal. Let this mixture sit at least ten minutes (or even overnight in the fridge).
Whisk dry ingredients, either in a separate bowl or directly into the same bowl. Stir everything together until just evenly mixed. Spread into the prepared pan.
Bake on the oven center rack for twenty five minutes in a square pan or one hour in a loaf pan, or until cooked through.
Test to see if it’s done by inserting a toothpick into the center of the loaf. The toothpick should come out mostly clean.
Let cool, then slice and frost if desired.
The taste and texture are even better the next day, if you can wait that long!
The gingerbread recipe is also really great to serve with Vegan Hot Chocolate.
Vegan Gingerbread
Ingredients
- 2 cups flour (spelt, white, or gluten free all purpose)
- 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tbsp ground ginger
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp allspice
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup sugar or coconut sugar or xylitol
- 1 1/4 cup milk of choice
- 1/4 cup oil or additional milk of choice
- 1/4 cup ground flaxseed
- 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar or white vinegar
- 1/2 cup molasses
- optional 1/2 cup raisins
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease an 8×8 pan (or a 9×5 loaf pan). In a large bowl, combine all liquid ingredients and flax, and let sit at least 10 minutes. Whisk dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then stir all ingredients together until just evenly mixed. Spread into the pan. Bake 25 minutes (or 45 minutes in a loaf pan) or until cooked through. Let cool. Taste and texture are even better the next day, so I highly recommend waiting if you can!View Nutrition Facts
Video
Notes
More Holiday Favorite Recipes
Healthy Pumpkin Pie or Vegan Pumpkin Pie
This looks so delicious. I think I will make it as part of a holiday brunch this weekend. Thanks for the great idea.
This looks amazing! I can’t wait to give it a try!
Ours turned out fabulously!
Can these be made into muffins. I’m going to make this tomorrow for a Saturday brunch and would prefer to take muffins.
I’m not Katie, and I haven’t tried it with this recipe, but I make muffins all the time from another one of Katie’s loaf recipes and it’s fine. You just need to change the baking time but other than that should be good to go.
Can you suggest a baking time for muffins, I would also like to muffinize this recipe!
Another commenter below said that hers took 20-25 minutes as muffins and came out perfectly. We haven’t tried it though!
Katie , do you think this recipe could be adjusted to make it keto friendly?
Wondering if I can sub in all almond flour or a comb of almond/ coconut flour but keep the overall measurement the same? Could easily sub erithryrol for the sugar and cut the molasses back by half. Any advice would be much appreciated! thank you!
You might try adapting this bread instead, as it’s already made with almond flour: https://lett-trim.today/almond-flour-banana-bread/%3C/a%3E%3Cbr /> We have never tried the vegan gingerbread with almond flour so unfortunately can’t say what the results would be, but be sure to report back if you experiment!
This looks and sounds great! Just the other day, I was telling my mom how I was looking to bake something with gingerbread, ideally that would be healthy and this is definitely a recipe I plan to make soon! So simple and sounds great!
Is the flax meant to be added with the liquid ingredients? I see that’s it’s listed among them, but the written instructions don’t specify. Otherwise, I’m not too sure why the liquid would need to sit for 10 minutes?
Thank you so much for catching that. Yes, the flax should go in with the liquid ingredients. Katie just added that into the instructions. Sorry for the error!
Jason (media relations)
I just pulled mine from the oven and it came out perfect. (Well I haven’t tried it yet so can’t say how it tastes, but it looks good and didn’t spill over.)
I was worried when I saw the review above, but thankfully mine worked. I came back on here to see if anyone in the comments ignored the advice to wait a day before eating it, because I don’t want to wait! ?
DELICIOUS! Half the loaf is already gone. Oops!!! ???
Thank you for making the recipe!
Absolutely awesome!,
This turned out fabulously! We topped it with Kite Hill cream cheese and it was amazing! 10/10 stars from my family :).
Thank you for trying it!
Hi There! I’d love to make this for Christmas. Just wondering what “gf ap flour” is??? I’m assuming it’s gluten free flour of some kind?
Yes! Katie uses this one by Bob’s Red Mill https://amzn.to/36I3EVQ
Where’s the icing recipe??
I made this bread, adding vanilla and a pinch of cloves to the recipe. It turned out great, not too sweet but plenty moist and light (and as specified by Katie, more so the next day). Don’t except to find the taste of your grandma’s gingerbread though. It tastes good but definitely différent from the sugar and butter heavy traditional gingerbread we used to make here in Quebec.
I ate it plain for breakfast and, for dessert, I served it with cream to my guests last night. They loved it.
Love your addition of cloves and vanilla. That sounds even better than the original!
This looks amazing. I love a good gingerbread loaf! Thanks for the recipe:)
Thought my loaf pan was standard size, but with batter dripped down into my oven I am realizing it is likely an 8×4 loaf pan rather than a 9×5.. The importance of using a big enough pan should be emphasized in the directions. Explains why my kitchen was smelling so wonderful earlier than i expected. However, even just in pulling off pieces cooked onto the outside of my pan, I can already say this tastes amazing!
Oh no, hopefully you were able to salvage some! Yes, this definitely needs every bit of a 9×5 pan!
Is the batter supposed to be really thick? Or really thin? I let the flaxseed sit with the liquid for over 10 minutes and my batter is super thin. I believe I also have an 8 x 4 pan and not a 9 x 5 so mine is about to overflow as well. What a bummer, hopefully it’s edible. Luckily I put a pan underneath my loaf because I read all of the reviews, so I won’t have a terrible mess on my hands.
Somewhere between thin and thick, if that makes sense? But yes, it definitely needs the 9×5 called for, because it makes a big loaf!
Waoh…..This is yummy. Thanks for this ginger bread recipe. I tried this for Xmas and came fabulous.