Easy and Healthy Gluten Free Gingerbread

This gluten free gingerbread is cozy and comforting at Christmas time and all winter long! Not only gluten free, it is also grain free and low in sugar, but still delicious and quick to whip up with this coconut flour-based recipe.

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It is hard to pick just one flavor that epitomizes Christmas treats. There are so many!

However, gingerbread is definitely a classic Christmas treat, appearing in drop cookies, cut-out cookies, cake, bars, and gingerbread houses and other projects. Now it has branched out into other formats, such as gingerbread lattes, granola, and so on.

Now, what if you are trying to maintain some outside-the-box dietary habit? Maybe you are gluten free, or grain free, or limiting your carbs or refined sugar?

There is still a way! It isn’t difficult to make, and you can be pulling it out of the oven in less than an hour while the aroma wafts around the house.

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This gluten free gingerbread recipe relies on coconut flour.

If you prefer to use almond flour, or if you are on the GAPS diet, you would do better with my other gingerbread recipe. It is made with optionally fermented almond flour and sweetened with honey. This recipe includes molasses for a classic gingerbread flavor.

Molasses isn’t GAPS compliant because of the way it is absorbed. Of course, you could experiment with swapping honey or date syrup (GAPS friendly) for molasses to tweak either recipe, but I haven’t done it and so can’t say for sure how that would turn out!

Is coconut flour healthier than almond flour?

Well, as in so many areas of life, there are tradeoffs.

Almond flour is sort of a darling of the low carb world these days. It contains antioxidants, nutrients including vitamin E, magnesium, manganese, and more, and more protein, fat, and fiber than many flours. It is low on the glycemic index, and so less apt to cause blood sugar spikes.

Almond flour is readily available, gluten free, and tastes pretty good. You have a fighting chance at successfully swapping almond flour into a recipe written for wheat or gluten free flour, unlike coconut flour. Read more about almond flour here.

It also has a lot of calories compared to many flours (not necessarily a bad thing!). It tends to be expensive, is a much more common allergen than coconut, and can make baked goods dense and heavy. (They are fluffier– and more digestible– when you ferment the almond flour first!)

Almond flour requires a lot of almonds to make a single recipe! If you don’t want to eat loads of almonds, almond flour isn’t a good choice.

While both almond and coconut flours contain phytic acid, an anti-nutrient that can damage the gut and inhibit nutrient absorption, almond flour has a higher phytic acid content. Then again, you can soak the almonds or ferment the flour to reduce the phytic acid, or buy a version of almond where this has been done for you.

Another drawback of almond flour is the oxalate content. You can’t soak or ferment oxalates out of almond flour, so if you are sensitive to oxalates, almond flour may be totally out. You get a lower oxalate content in almond flour (blanched) versus almond meal.

If you aren’t especially sensitive, you might still limit almond flour; oxalates contribute to many health problems, including joint pain, kidney stones, and UTIs. Learn more about oxalates here.

So how does coconut flour compare?

Like almond flour, coconut flour is gluten free and grain free. It is high in fiber (higher than almond) and low in carbohydrates (though higher than almond). Coconut flour also supplies a range of vitamins and minerals, plus lauric acid, which is good for our hearts and anti-bacterial and anti-viral. Learn more here.

On the downside, while being lower in oxalates, coconut flour is higher in salicylates. Some people are more sensitive to salicylates than others; if you are sensitive, coconut flour might not be a good choice.

Coconut flour is cheaper than almond flour. Because it works very differently with other ingredients, you will use far less coconut flour than almond (or wheat flour or gluten free flour blend) in a recipe. (About 1/4 the amount of other flours.)

This is a drawback in its own way– substituting coconut flour into a recipe written for another flour is challenging. Save yourself the frustration (and expense and time) and start with a recipe that calls for coconut flour. Don’t try to convert! Coconut flour can produce inedibly dry and dense baked goods.

The bottom line on flour

There isn’t a perfect flour to use! If you are not using grain flours at the moment, and also limiting carbs, you have only a few options. It is best to make baked treats a small part of your diet. None of the flour options are exactly superfoods! All carry risks along with benefits.

Results may vary according to the individual.

If you can use some grains, and maybe ferment them to make them easier to digest, then do that. There are grain free flours and starches, like cassava, tiger nut, arrowroot, and so on, that might work well if you don’t need to restrict starches and carbs.

For now, we feel better with less (or no) grain and starch, and I am leaning more toward coconut flour. We all seem to tolerate it well. In this gluten free gingerbread, you will not taste the coconut flavor very easily. It disappears into all the other flavors!

How to Make Gluten Free Gingerbread Bars

After all that trouble over what flour to use, the recipe is pretty easy! You can stir this up in no time.

First, preheat your oven to 350° F. Melt the butter– I usually stick it in the oven in my 8″ square pan to melt while I whip up the rest of the ingredients. Then I pour the melted butter into the mixing bowl and brush what is left around the pan so is greased.

You don’t have to do it like that– just melt the butter and grease the pan somehow.

Whisk the coconut flour with the rest of the dry ingredients. Whisk in the applesauce, molasses, sour cream, eggs, and butter.

When the batter is smooth, pour it into the greased pan. If the batter it too thick to spread easily, I wet my hands and sort of pat it around the pan to even it out. It doesn’t need to be perfectly smooth.

Let it rest (either in the bowl or in the pan) for 10 minutes or so. The coconut flour absorbs a lot of moisture! This is the reason you use so little. I think the result is superior when I let it do some absorption before baking.

Bake about 30 minutes.

Make Gluten Free Gingerbread Bars Your Way!

• increase or reduce the spices, or leave one out
• you could add other spices, such as allspice or cardamom
• use yogurt or kefir in place of the sour cream
• I sometimes use up egg whites in this recipe– about twice the number of egg whites as whole eggs
• you can increase the molasses to 1/3 cup
• if you want it to be sweeter, you could add sugar, brown sugar, or a sugar substitute
• if you don’t want to use applesauce, you could try using the same amount of mashed banana, butternut squash (cooked and mashed), or pumpkin– the banana will be sweet but probably taste banana-like, and the squash or pumpkin will not be as sweet, so check the taste and sweeten more as needed. I haven’t tried these substitutions, so let me know how they work if you try them!
• you can probably make this dairy free using coconut oil or another oil with a dairy free yogurt or sour cream– I haven’t tried it, though.

There you go! An easy, Christmas-y gluten free gingerbread!