Sustainable baking - cookies with a good conscience

What would christmas season be without the sweet and homely smell of cookies. In addition to Advent wreaths and Christmas market visits, delicious cookies are simply part of the pre-Christmas season. Knead the dough, roll it out, cut it out and put it in the oven - hmmmm, that smells great! Alone or together with children or friends - it's a real pleasure. It's even more fun when you keep the environment in mind. We'll show you how you can conjure up delicious treats in your Christmas bakery in a sustainable way. 

Environmentally friendly alternatives: Baking utensils & Co.

Of course, sustainable baking doesn't just start with the ingredients for the baked goods, but also with the baking utensils you use in the kitchen. For example, conventional baking paper is a purely disposable item and usually coated with substances that are not biodegradable or even hazardous to health. Here you can fall back on alternatives: Either you simply grease the baking tray, fall back on compostable baking paper or get yourself a permanent baking mat - make sure here that it is free of BPA and dioxin. You can do a few things to be sustainable with the rest of your utensils, too. For example, a rolling pin can come from sustainable forests or you can improvise with a bottle. It also makes sense to use durable stainless-steel cutters instead of plastic. 

A few additional tips:  

·       You don't necessarily need to refrigerate the cookie dough in plastic wrap, a bowl with a lid or wax paper will do.
·       You can also omit the preheating for some cookies during baking to save energy. Additional tip: Use the residual heat after switching off!
·       Using convection instead of top/bottom heat also saves energy. This is because circulating air requires lower temperatures.
·       Baking pans made of glass, ceramic and enamel ensure a more even distribution of heat and lead to shorter baking times.

Sustainable cookies: The ingredients

To make sure it's not only really delicious, but also sustainable, it's best to buy organic, regional and fair-trade ingredients wherever possible. This has several advantages: When you grow your ingredients organically, unlike conventional farming, fewer resources such as water are used and no toxic pesticides or chemicals are used. This is good for your health and the environment, which is good for all of us. In addition, you should look for a fair trade seal, especially when buying spices or cocoa. This ensures that the producers and their workers work under appropriate conditions. You can also protect the environment by buying regionally, since less CO2 is produced when the transport routes are shortened. vegan cookies also protect the environment and animals: Simply replace butter with margarine and use applesauce, bananas or vegan egg substitutes instead of eggs.  

Avoid waste when baking

Unfortunately, it is not so easy to avoid waste, especially when baking. In the meantime, you can often get unpackaged fruit and vegetables in normal supermarkets, but the chances are rather poor for other products. If you have an unpackaged store near you, you can get flour, sugar, baking powder, etc. there without packaging.  

Store your cookies plastic free or give them away as a gift

When all the cookies are baked for the Christmas season, you are of course still faced with the challenge of storing them sustainably. If you don't have classic cookie tins at home, stainless-steel storage boxes are a wonderful way to store your cookies or even give them as gifts. And no, it's not rude to say you'd like the tin back, because then it can be filled with cookies again the following year!