Gingerbread Coconut Flour Cookies

November 30, 2014

By Anna Varriano

Gingerbread cookies at Christmas time are a must in our house. We’ve always used a pretty traditional recipe. This year, I thought I’d experiment a bit and replace the wheat flour with coconut flour, and the white sugar with coconut sugar. The texture is a bit softer than our traditional gingerbread cookies, but the taste is all there! A great option for anyone avoiding wheat/gluten or grains in general.

Coconut flour is high in protein and fibre, and contains healthy fats including lauric acid, which promotes immune function. If you’ve never used coconut flour before, you should know that you cannot do a 1-to-1 substitution between coconut flour and wheat flour as coconut flour is quite dense and very absorbent.  A general rule of thumb is to replace 1 cup of wheat flour with 1/4 to 1/3 cup of coconut flour. You’ll also have to add more eggs and/or liquid to your recipe. Some sources state that for every cup of coconut flour used in baking, you have to use six eggs and one cup of liquid – I didn’t do this for this recipe. Baking with coconut flour can be tricky, so it’s best to find recipes written specifically to use it rather than experimenting with your own.

Coconut sugar can be used as a direct replacement for sugar. Some sources state that it has more minerals than white sugar as well as a lower glycemic index. More research is being done to support these claims.

Please note that the dough for this recipe has to be refrigerated and makes about 2 dozen cookies, depending on how thin you roll the dough.

What You’ll Need

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  • 2 eggs (even though only one is pictured above)
  • 1/2 cup of soft butter
  • 1/2 cup of coconut sugar
  • 1/4 cup molasses
  • 1 cup of coconut flour
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp of baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp of ground cloves
  • 1 tsp of ground ginger
  • 1 tsp of ground cinnamon

Making the Dough

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I use a food processor to make this dough. You can use a mixer too, just be aware that the dough gets quite thick, so make sure that whatever equipment you use has good power! Mix ingredients as follows:

  • mix 1/2 cup of the coconut flour with the salt, baking soda, and spices and put aside
  • put eggs, butter, and sugar in the food processor and cream together for 1 minute
  • add molasses to the creamed mixture and blend for another minute
  • add dry ingredients that were put aside (first bullet point!) and blend until smooth
  • add remaining coconut flour and blend until smooth
  • remove dough from processor/mixing bowl, roll into a ball, wrap in wax paper, and refrigerate for 2 hours.

Rolling, Cutting, and Baking

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  • set oven to 375F
  • take the dough out of the fridge and cut it in half, working with one half at a time
  • roll the dough out between two pieces of wax paper until it is about 1/8 of an inch thick
  • cut out shapes with cookie cutters and carefully transfer them to a parchment paper lined cookie sheet (using a spatula to transfer the cookies from the wax paper to the cookie sheets is a useful tip!)
  • roll dough scraps from between cut out shapes into a ball, roll it out between 2 sheets of wax paper, cut more cookies…repeat…repeat…until you’ve used all the dough
  • Bake for 6 minutes, or until the bottom of the cookies just starts to brown
  • LET COOL COMPLETELY before removing from baking sheet to avoid breakage

Decorate

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Decorate with melted white chocolate or a simple icing. We usually use a Royal Icing Mix.

 Enjoy!

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