Healthy Gingerbread Cookies:

Almost time to top up the tinsel and crack on with Michael Buble’s Christmas album. Almost time? Now’s the time. Christmas celebrations are never too premature. Whoever tells you otherwise is just boring. A December classic, Gingerbread cookies are must any festive season. I’ve healthified the classic recipe sans icing sugar as sometimes a good old biscuit doesn’t need the frills. However, if you do wish to ice them with something less invasive than a sugary syrup there is an option below. 

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of coconut oil
• ⅔ cup of coconut sugar
• 3 ½ tsp of ginger spice
• 2 tbsp of cinnamon
• ¾ tsp of bicarbonate of soda
• 1 ½ cups of gluten-free self-rising flour
• 1 ½ cups of buckwheat flour
• 50g of blackstrap molasses – try to find organic 
• 100g of good quality maple syrup
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
• A pinch of salt

Method:

In a saucepan, heat your molasses and coconut oil at medium heat. Add your coconut sugar and maple syrup and whisk to combine. Set aside to cool.

In a large mixing bowl, sieve your dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk your eggs and vanilla essence together. Add the cooled stovetop mix to your dry ingredients, and then fold in your egg mixture. Work the dough until well-combined. This will take some time but I promise it’ll eventually come together!

Cover the dough in cling-film and leave in the fridge for minimum an hour. It can be left in the fridge overnight even!

Pop your oven on 180ºC and line a baking tray with baking paper. Remove your dough from the fridge and leave to cool slightly if it’s rock hard. If not, dust a clean work top with some buckwheat flour. Add some buckwheat flour to your rolling pin too. This isn’t going to be a pretty process – but do your best at rolling out your dough to form a 1cm layer. It may take some repetition but I have found that constantly adding flour to the rolling pin really helps.

Using gingerbread men cookie cutters, cut out your cookies. Place on a baking tray and bake for 12-15 minutes.

For the decoration, I used my healthy turmeric icing (found at the end of this recipe) some desiccated coconut and vegan chocolate chips! Get creative and share yours tagging @morganshelly on IG.

This dough also freezes well – so pop the leftovers in some cling film and freeze for when you need that Christmas pick-me-up again.