I’m surprised its taken me this long to come up with a healthy gingerbread recipe. Since I’ve had the blog for 3 years now, the only gingerbread cookie recipe I’ve had is my Healthy Gingersnaps. Although they are delicious, its still fun to make something like these gingerbread cut out cookies. Especially if you have kids. My 5 year old had the best time helping me cut them out, and piping some of the faces and buttons herself.
These cookies are easy to make, and the dough is easy to work with. Its a bit stiff at first when it comes out of the fridge, but once you roll it out, its a piece of cake! (I mean, cookies!)
Not only are these gingerbread cut out cookies gluten free, as they’re made with oat flour (just make sure you use uncontaminated oats if you are celiac), they also use very little fat and sweetener.
I’ll admit, I’m not an expert at rolling out dough. Mine was thicker in the middle of the dough circle and thinner on the outsides. Thankfully the recipe is forgiving and my thin men, and thicker men both baked up beautifully…
I don’t feel like these are an ‘indulgence’ really, as they are made with whole grain oat flour and other whole food ingredients.
I hope you enjoy them as much as we do!
- 3 Tbsp butter, softened (for dairy free sub with Earth Balance or vegan margarine)
- ½ cup coconut palm sugar (or sucanat, or another raw brown sugar)
- 6 packets stevia (or 1/16 to ⅛ tsp concentrated powdered stevia. Could also omit and/or add ¼ cup additional sweetener)
- ½ cup unsweetened applesauce
- ¼ cup molasses (I used blackstrap)
- 1 egg
- 3 cups oat flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp baking powder
- 1½ tsps ginger
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp allspice
- In a large bowl or stand mixer with paddle attachment, cream together the butter, coconut sugar, stevia.
- Once blended, mix in the egg, molasses and applesauce. Once that's together, it will look curdled, which is how its supposed to look.
- Next, to the same bowl add in all the dry ingredients at once...starting with the oat flour, then baking soda, baking powder and all the spices (ginger, cinnamon, allspice). Mix until blended together and forms into a wet dough. *The dough will be quite wet and sticky. Resist the urge to add more flour at this point. The consistency will change once the dough has been been chilled.
- Take dough, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least 3 hours. ^+ hours or overnight would be ideal.
- When ready to bake your cookies, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
- Spread oat flour on a sheet of plastic wrap or parchment. Put the dough on the oat flour. Sprinkle more oat flour on top of the dough and place another sheet of plastic on top. Roll out dough between 2 large pieces of parchment paper or plastic wrap. If your dough seems super sticky for some reason, knead in some extra oat flour.
- A trick I used to make it easier to roll out is holding the end of the parchment paper by folding the end piece over the counter and holding it with my hips! That way, I could roll it out without the paper moving. Its a stiff dough like regular gingerbread, so it takes a bit of muscle to roll it out.
- Once the dough is to a thickness you like, cut into shapes. To avoid your cookie cutter from sticking, dip it in a bit of oat flour and shake off the excess. The amount of cookies you get depend on the shape you use. Once you cut out your shapes, keep rolling out the remaining dough until you have none left.
- Cooking time will depend on the thickness of the cookies. I baked mine for 10 minutes. I'd say they were average thickness. If they are fairly thin, I'd bake for 8 minutes, then check. You just want the cookies firm, and there will be no thumbprint if you press them. You can't tell by color on these when you pull them out.
- Cool on a cookie sheet and transfer to a cooling rack.
- Add icing with a piping bag if desired. I didn't measure the icing I made and I had lots left over, so I can't include in nutrition. I added 1.5 Tbsp butter with approx 2 cups icing sugar, pinch of cream of tartar and a bit of unsweetened almond milk. Just whipped to a spreadable consistency. I added it to a piping bag and decorated. Since I didn't add too much icing to mine, my guess would be its adding about 30 more calories per cookie and a few grams of sugar.