Gingerbread Cookies: grain-free and gluten-free treats infused with warm spices, fresh ginger, and citrus.

Gingerbread was never one of our holiday cookies. I don’t think my mom liked it, and who can blame her. The dough is usually sticky and irksome to work with. The resulting cookies smell spicy but they have the texture and flavor of a car air freshener. I’d beg to add gingerbread, and when I was old enough to make it myself, make gingerbread. Only to be mired in the disappointment and frustration my mom wanted to avoid. Enter this recipe from Stella Parks. These cookies are so perfect. But, I can’t have them in my gluten free life.

These holiday gingerbread cookies take Stella’s spice blend and an adapted version of my sugar cookie cutouts (we have to cut back on the liquid in egg white form to accommodate the molasses or maple syrup). Yes, there are a lot of ingredients, but these cookies are spectacular. The dough is pretty easy to work with, just make sure you chill it between batches. These are perfect for decorating and hold up pretty well for a week in a well sealed container.

Try these along with some of my other holiday classic cookies:

Sugar cookie cutouts

Jam Drops

Russian Tea Cookies (aka Snowballs or Mexican Wedding Cookies)

Candy Cane Cookies

Gingerbread Cut Out Cookies

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Prep Time 1 hour hr

Cook Time 30 minutes mins

Ingredients

  

• 1⅔ cups cassava flour 8 oz
• ½ cup almond flour 2.5 oz.
• 3/4 cup brown sugar 5 oz
• ¼ cup molasses 3 oz.
• 1 cup salted butter softened at room temperature
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ tsp xanthan gum
• ½ teaspoon orange zest
• 1 ½ teaspoons ground ginger or sub about 2 tsp fresh grated ginger
• 1 ¼ teaspoons ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon baking soda there is a lot of acidity with the molasses and brown sugar to neutralize
• ⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
• ⅛ teaspoon ground coriander
• ⅛ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• A few cracks of medium-ground black pepper

Instructions

 

• Cream butter until fluffy (I usually do this in mixer but the food processor works too). Add eggs, sugar, molasses vanilla extract, spices, baking powder, salt and xanthan gum. Scrape down and mix again.
• Add flours and mix, scraping down the bowl once mid mix.
• Pour dough onto starched parchment paper, top with a bit of starch and top with more parchment and press to ½ inchish thick.
• This dough needs a good chill, I keep it cold and roll out shapes and then pat thin and reroll.
• Preheat oven to 350.
• Line a couple baking sheets with parchment.
• Roll these anywhere between 1/8 of an inch for crisp cookies and ¼ inch for tender crip cookies.
• Bake 8-10 mins until just browning at the edges.
• Definitely let them cool on the pan a bit before moving to a cooling rack and only reuse cookie sheet once it is completely cool.