Paleo Gingerbread Cookies

Grain free paleo gingerbread cookies are so easy to make and are even healthy for you! Only a few ingredients are needed for these refined sugar-free, vegan, and gluten-free holiday treats!

The major benefit to writing a cookbook on kale during the holidays is yinning the Christmas cookie yang. Kale salad affords you things like cookies and booze. Between detoxing and re-toxing, we’ve got to end up somewhere, and that somewhere is right where we should be: smack dab in the middle of an equation that is reconciled by kale and cookies.

But hold the phone. We can do this holiday thing without kale, detoxing, OR New Years Resolutions if we want to. We can find healthful alternatives to the bane of our ass’s existence (in this context, the bane of our ass’s existence is sugar and wheat. Just to be clear).

A couple of weeks ago, I showed you 50 Gluten Free Christmas Cookie Recipes and figured it would be wise to actually test a couple of the recipes I told you to make. Call it my civic duty. I was intrigued by the idea of gluten free gingerbread cookies. So I poked around my own post.

One of the recipes I settled on was for these Paleo Gingerbread Cookies from The Iron You < – – – cool blog! – – – > and I was amazed by how they turned out. The recipe is not only paleo (no grains, dairy or sugar), but it’s also vegan. So I was skeptical. I figured the cookies would crumble or turn out rock solid.

Neither one of those things happened. These are perfect.  They have a nice little crunch on the outside and are soft on the inside. And they’re PACKED with gingerbread flavor. There’s nothing toxifying about them, which means you can save your re-toxing cookies in your cookie bank to be redeemed later following a high-octane kale dish.

Between these cookies, vegan eggnog, and eggnog bread with boozy maple glaze, we’re set to have a decadent Christmas without the need for post-holiday psychosis. We can eat amazing things without having to compensate with kale. But we should still eat kale. Because that’s how kale cookbooks sell.

Note: this recipe was updated 12/11/14. This was the original photo:

Eat them healthy cookies!

Gluten Free Gingerbread Cookies

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Author: Julia

This recipe was updated 12/25/14

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Ingredients

• 1-1/4 cup tightly packed blanched almond flour
• 2 tablespoons tapioca flour
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1-1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 tablespoon fresh ginger peeled and grated
• 1/4 cup unsulphured molasses
• 5 tablespoons coconut oil melted and cooled*

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Add the first eight ingredients (dry) to a bowl and mix together.

3. Pour in the molasses and oil and mix well.
4. Use a spoon to scoop out mounds of cookie dough. Form the dough into cookie shapes (they will bake to the same size and shape you form them into) and place them on a baking sheet.

5. Bake for 9 to 14 minutes or until browned around the edges (bake 9 for chewier soft cookies and 12-14 for snappy cookies).

6. Allow cookies to cool at least 10 minutes before removing from the cookie sheet and enjoying

Recipe Notes

If you don't have nutmeg and cloves on hand, you can omit them and use 1/2 teaspoon of allspice