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This recipe for old fashioned gingerbread cookies uses only a few wholesome ingredients and blackstrap molasses for extra nutrition just like Grandma used to make!
My paternal Grandmother wasn’t much of a cook but, boy oh boy, could she ever bake! I was fortunate that Grandma and Grandpa lived about a half-mile down the road from my parent’s home.
Grandma would start her Christmas baking right after Thanksgiving each year, churning out batch after batch of all sorts of holiday cookies. My 6 siblings and I couldn’t wait to jump on our bikes and ride over to sample the freshly made goodies after getting home from school each day.
Grandma’s gingerbread cookies made with unsulphured molasses were my absolute favorite!
She would carefully cut out the dough into gingerbread boys, stars, Christmas trees, and Santa shapes. After baking, I would decorate them with icing and sprinkles at her kitchen table.
I adored her sugar cookies too.
Christmas Tradition!
I make Grandma’s homemade molasses cookies every single Christmas as a tradition for my own children. No surprise that they love them just as much as I still do!
When they were younger, I whipped up homemade butter frosting and purchased nontoxic food coloring so they could decorate them like I did when I was a child.
Gingerbread Cookies Recipe
Old fashioned gingerbread molasses cookies recipe made with only wholesome ingredients to delight your family and friends.
Ingredients
- 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour preferably sprouted and sifted
- 1 cup expeller pressed coconut oil
- 1 cup evaporated cane sugar
- 1 cup molasses preferably organic
- 1 egg preferably free range or pastured
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp ground ceylon cinnamon heaping, preferably organic and freshly grated
- 1 tsp ground ginger preferably organic
- 1 tsp ground cloves preferably organic
- 1 pinch sea salt
Instructions
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Warm coconut oil in a small glass bowl on the stovetop and blend with sugar in a glass mixing bowl. Mix in molasses and beaten egg.
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Sift flour with baking soda and spices and blend into wet ingredients one cup at a time until all the flour used.
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Roll out dough to any thickness desired and cut into shapes with cookie cutters.
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Bake at 350 F/ 177 C for 10 minutes.
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Cool. Store in airtight containers.Â
More Healthy Cookie Recipes to Try!
Here are some other healthy cookie recipes you can feel good about serving your family that include only wholesome ingredients.
I’m wondering if you could use almond flour in place of the flour since we are grain free right now. Also, sugar free. Honey or would that completely change the recipe?
fun idea but, yikes, tooooooo much sugar/sweeteners!
happy holidays.
Absolutely nothing wrong with homemade cookies made with natural sweeteners once in awhile. We have tastebuds that sense and like sweetness … ever notice how incredibly SWEET mother’s milk is? (yes, I’ve tasted it!)
hahaha yah me too. Just about 1month ago as I’m nursing. Taste real sweet! I tell my baby yum yum that’s good stuff huh!
I have a gas stove. How would I use a glass bowl on it? Wouldn’t it break? Any reason I couldn’t use a normal saucepan to heat up coconut oil? Thanks!
Sure, a saucepan is fine. I just like glass as you can more easily judge when it is melted from across the kitchen so you can get it off the heat and it doesn’t get too hot.
Tavie, I just put coconut oil in a glass Pyrex measuring cup and stuck it in the oven while the oven is preheating. Then I just take it out as soon as it’s mostly melted so it doesn’t get too hot.
Sara-
So, if I’m correct, Crisco is just the new substitute for where people USED to use leftover lard from meat preparation?? Do you know anything about traditional baking using lard- gingerbread and pie crusts etc?? I know the older woman in my rural southern community i just moved from have always and often still do use rendered lard for their amazing pie crusts! I’d love to learn more about how and also making sure we don’t impart a strange undesired flavor into the baked goods. For some things their just seems to be no substitute- even using butter in place of other things in my pie crust is often an epic fail! I think I’ve maybe seen a writing about this from some WAP blogger…hmmmm… Now my mind is wandering. Some lard and healthy flower could sure make a nutritious crust for fruity pies and quiches!
If you changed the recipe from the original, they’re not your gramma’s cookies at all. When something is a tradition, best to keep to the original whether it’s what you think of as healthy or not. I would not use Crisco, but I would use butter, and many recipes substitute butter for margarine and oleo, etc, without it being considered a *real* change. But you’ve changed the entire recipe! I’m sure gramma didn’t have sucanat and coconut oil.
Wow! These look delicious. Do you think I could do a sourdough version?
Not sure … that would really affect the flavor I think. Sprouted flour works beautifully.
Did you use sprouted whole wheat white flour?
I actually made a batch just last night and used sprouted kamut (I buy the berries sprouted and then grind into sprouted flour fresh when I use it). You can use whatever sprouted flour you like though.
Could I make a gingerbread house with this recipe ?
These cookies are soft .. don’t think a house would hold together too well.
Soft …. Mmmmmmm 🙂
Sara, how about the original recipe also. Then we could decide which one to make !
How sweet are these? Are they crunchy or soft?
Thanks!