Gluten Free Gingerbread Cookies with Coconut Flour

Don’t miss out on Christmas cookies on a special diet! These gingerbread cookies are gluten free, grain free, and low sugar. They are also quick and easy cookies to make– you can have them ready in no time!

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Freshly baked gingerbread cookies a beloved aroma of Christmas!

Gingerbread may not be the only smell we associate with Christmas time, but it definitely a cozy, inviting smell. Actually, gingerbread is good all winter long!

Tweaking gingerbread cookies for a gluten free, grain free, or low sugar dietary habit takes some trial and error, but I have done that for you. (My family has had several batches of this recipe, and the cookies still disappear rather quickly.)

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Gingerbread Cookie Health Profile

We love gingerbread cookies mainly for the taste, but it turns out those warm spices have all sorts of health benefits as well.

Ginger provides anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, as well as supporting digestive health and fighting some diseases.

Cinnamon does similar things for us, also supporting blood sugar balance.

Cloves support digestion, immune system, and the brain, potentially alleviating pain and more.

Nutmeg performs similar functions, and may promote good sleep.

So, gingerbread is basically a health food! Except that most recipes rely on ingredients that aren’t so great for us.

Conventional wheat flour is fraught with hazards. Replacing it with higher-quality flour and maybe fermenting it helps a lot, but not enough if you really must avoid gluten or grains.

Gingerbread usually contains quite a lot of sugar, too. Molasses forms part of the gingerbread flavor, and usually there is plenty of white sugar, brown sugar, or both in addition to the molasses. Not ideal.

Improved Gingerbread Cookie Recipe

To make these cookies, we will tweak the ingredients a bit, while keeping the lovely spices.

We will use some molasses for flavor. Molasses, while still sugar, has some health benefits itself. The byproduct of sugar production, molasses contains the minerals that are removed from the sugar in the refining process. Some of the benefits of molasses pertain to blackstrap molasses only, and I would not describe unsulfured molasses as a health food, exactly.

Some sweetness will come from applesauce. The applesauce also adds needed moisture and helps the cookies hold together.

The rest of the sweetening is from coconut sugar. Somewhat less processed and less prone to provoking blood sugar spikes, coconut sugar tastes delicious! We won’t use much. You can substitute regular sugar or a sugar substitute you like in baked goods if you prefer.

Another change is the coconut flour. Coconut flour is naturally gluten free, grain free, and lower in carbohydrates. It has its own health advantages.

If you are new to baking with coconut flour, you may wonder if the small quantity is a typo! Coconut flour works so differently from other flours that I would not recommend trying it in a recipe written for any other type of flour.

If you did try, you would divide the regular flour quantity by 4 (so one fourth cup coconut flour replaces one cup of some other flour) and work from there. Getting a good result will require trial and error.

Because coconut flour absorbs a lot of moisture, you can’t use much in proportion to the wet ingredients. A dough made with coconut flour will also behave a bit differently after a few minutes as it absorbs liquid. So, it is helpful to let the dough sit for 5-10 minutes before you proceed with baking it.

How to Make Gingerbread Cookies

Gather your ingredients and preheat the oven to 350° F. Cream the butter and coconut sugar, add the molasses and eggs, then stir in the spices, applesauce, flour, and baking soda and salt.

Let the dough rest so the moisture soaks into the coconut flour, then roll a ball a bit bigger than 1″ in diameter and bake it for 10 minutes. Do just one as a “test cookie”. Adjust the dough if needed– see below.

Once you are satisfied with your test cookie, roll all the dough into balls and bake.

Help! My gingerbread cookie dough isn’t working right!

Baking with alternative flours can be tricky! I recommend baking one test cookie before sticking the whole batch into the oven so you can adjust the dough if the cookies flop. It doesn’t take that long, and it may save your losing a whole batch! I even bake a test cookie with tried and true recipes– coconut flour is that sensitive.

So what to do if that first cookie doesn’t turn out right?

• if the test cookie is much too soft (spreads out too much), add a tablespoon of coconut flour and send another test cookie into the oven. Remember, a little coconut flour goes a very long way!
• if the cookie is too dry (eat it to check– you have permission!), try adding more butter, applesauce, or another egg. You will want to do another test cookie to check.
• if the cookie was close to right, but didn’t spread out at all (and you want it to), you could add more butter or other wet ingredient. If you basically like it, and it doesn’t have a dry feel in your mouth, you could just flatten it a little with your hand or with a drinking glass or some such.

About flattening your gingerbread cookies…

Sometimes I do this and other times it doesn’t seem necessary. The dough isn’t the same every time, even if you measure carefully. It also depends a little on your preference. Here is how these turn out if…

Not flattened at all:

Flattened a tiny bit:

The dough balls are flattened so they go into the oven looking the way you want them to be after baking:

Questions and Answers

Is this gingerbread cookie GAPS compliant?

No, because of the molasses and coconut sugar. They are not the worst sugars out there, but they are not GAPS approved because they are disaccharides (two sugar molecules) and prone to feeding bad bacteria in the gut. Stick with monosaccharides on the GAPS diet– mainly honey.

Can I make this recipe dairy free?

I haven’t tested it with anything but butter (yet), but you could try it with coconut oil, palm oil, or a high-quality lard or tallow. If you tolerate ghee, that might work.

Can I make it without eggs?

This recipe works without eggs (sort of). The applesauce helps bind the dough somewhat, but the results without eggs are definitely crumbly. Leave out the egg, bake a test cookie, and add more applesauce if you need to. Let the cookies cool completely before you attempt to remove them from the parchment. They will fall apart very easily. The situation will be better once the cookies cool, but they remain quite fragile.

What if I can’t have applesauce?

If you are not able to eat apple, or just don’t have it on hand, you could try another mashed fruit. Banana would probably work, though you will taste it. That might not be a bad thing!

You could try mashed butternut squash; I think it would work but haven’t tried.

Cooked pumpkin works pretty well– I have tried it– but the cookies are less sweet. Taste the dough and add more sugar if you want.

Looking for more gingerbread related recipes? Try:

almond flour gingerbread— no molasses and GAPS compliant

coconut flour gingerbread— with molasses

gingerbread apple crisp— uses gingerbread crumbs, so if your gingerbread cookies fall apart…

gingerbread latte— so easy, so festive, so good… no baking required!