Season's Greetings from the German Environment Agency | Umweltbundesamt

Season's Greetings from the German Environment Agency

Climate change is the greatest challenge which now face man and the environment. We are glad that the agreement adopted in Paris will produce the first climate agreement, binding for all countries, that is able to meet this challenge.

There are also small ways that each and every one of us can do something for the environment – for example through our food. Buying seasonal organic produce, doing without meat from time to time, and preparing meals in an energy-efficient ways are some of the individual ways to make a contribution.

One can also make a difference at Christmas. We present you our climate advice for Christmas baking:

• Pre-heating the oven is not necessary
• Use the convection setting to bake your biscuits: several baking sheets can be done in one go
• Make use of residual heat and turn the oven off a few minutes before baking time ends
• Look for organically grown ingredients because they reduce climate footprint
• Consider this: substitute butter (23.7 kg CO₂ emissions per kilo) with a greener alternative such as organic margarine, ideally pure vegetable-based, non-hydrogenated or trans fat-free.

Ingredients:

• 100 g hazelnuts, ground
• 200 g vegetable-based margarine
• 65 g (raw cane) sugar
• 280 g flour
• 1/2 packet vanilla sugar
• 100 g powdered sugar

Recipe:

Combine all ingredients to make the dough. Refrigerate for one hour. Roll out dough and cut out shapes as desired (depending on demand we may have an eco-angel biscuit cutter next year … ). Place biscuits on baking sheet and bake at 200° C for about ten minutes.

You can sprinkle vanilla and powdered sugar or even chocolate shavings on the baked biscuits. Or use chocolate and other decorations. Wait until biscuits have cooled to decorate.

For more tips on practical climate protection click on the links located to the upper right. Did you enjoy these vegan biscuits? Click here for more vegan Christmas baking recipes.