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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.
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.
Oh my goodness! This recipe is AWESOME! The dough is so wonderful to work with that even my 3 and 7year old had no issues with rolling out, cutting and placing it on the baking sheet. The result is either nice and crunchy or soft depending on the thickness of the dough. Delish! Thank you for the recipe!
Do you think I could use coconut sugar in place of the sucanat?
Sucanat is cane sugar with the molasses so substituting coconut sugar would reduce the gingerbread flavor of the cookies. If you want to make this substitution anyway, I would suggest increasing the molasses part of the recipe a bit. Not sure how much, as I haven’t tried this substitution myself. If you do, please let us know how it turns out.
Can I substitute coconut flour?
Coconut flour will not work for this recipe. Coconut flour behaves quite differently from grain based flours in baking.
Are you familiar with Swedish gingerbread biscuits ‘Pepparkakor'(pepper biscuits) that recipe usually consists of white flour, milk, butter, cinnamon, ginger, clove and sometimes cardamom, white sugar and syrup. The butter gives it, it’s moist texture and don’t melt it in a pan but let it just soften on the counter otherwise you end with dry biscuits.I was just wondering if I could substitute sugar and syrup in this recipe with coconut sugar. I love Swedish food, as I’m originally from Sweden and You can probably understand how attached we all are to our cultures, in terms of putting a healthy spin on some our favourite recipes without them tasting like cardboard!
Is it okay to just use coconut sugar for this recipe instead of molasses?
No, you can’t make that substitution. It would completely change the recipe. The cookies would no longer be molasses cookies.
Thanks for your work on this recipe! I just did a test run of these cookies before the holiday baking season and they are outstanding! It was everything I was looking for in a cookie! I scoured the web looking for a soaked flour version and had no luck so I tried searching for sprouted flour and found this. They tasted wonderful with just enough spice and the dough was so easy to work with. I’m guessing I could thank the coconut oil for that. I almost subbed it for butter and I’m so glad I didn’t! For anyone worried about tasting coconut in the finished cookie, I couldn’t tell and neither could my family. The only change I would make would be to cook them 2 minutes less so they’re a bit more chewy but that’s only because it’s my personal preference. Thanks again for the wonderful recipe!
Can you use coconut butter in this recipe?
You really need to use just the oil.
Would you say that coconut butter is healthier than coconut oil?
No, it is just different. They are both beneficial and healthful. It’s about using one or the other in the appropriate culinary situation.
I don’t know if you know but you can get hold french unpasteurized butter with sea salt in stores such as waitrose, does cooking butter make it less healthy in terms of of fat?
Do you lose anything when you cook butter in terms of nutrition?
If the butter was pasteurized, no you don’t lose anything. If the butter was raw, then you would lose enzymes and probiotics.