Grain-Free Gingerbread Men
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Holidays were sweet at my Mom's house--between the occasional sweet bread and a few biscotti, there was always a pile of sugar cookies, which we would decorate one by one with softly colored icing and plenty of sprinkles.
Prompted by the holiday carols on the radio and the snow outside, I've been thinking about holiday cookies a lot lately. Is there anything sweeter than an afternoon inside, decorating cookies while humming little songs?
These cookies are crispy and snappy. They're full of warm gingerbread spices, which makes them perfect for dipping in a cup of coffee or hot chocolate. Best of all, they'll fill any craving for holiday sweets or cookie decorating afternoons.
While there are a lot of frosting recipes out there, and quite few recipes for Paleo Royal Icing, I actually just decorated these with straight coconut butter. It's simple, it's easy, and it's super creamy. Coconut butter on a spoon? Yuum! Coconut butter on a cookie? Double yum! Personally, I find the cookies sweet enough. If you want to decorate these cookies with something more traditional, go for it! To be totally honest: plenty of these cookies were eaten before they finished cooling down, which means they never got frosted at all! Oops.
One last totally honest tidbit: one year I dressed up as a gingerbread man for Halloween. My parents had to talk me out of eating my candy buttons before the 31st. I couldn't have been any older than 5, what could you expect? #EmbarrassingMoments.
Grain-Free Gingerbread Men
Thin and crispy, these gingerbread men have all of the snap of the traditional cookie.
Yields: 24 | Total Time:
Ingredients:
- 1-3/4 cups almond flour
- 1/4 cup arrowroot powder, plus extra for rolling out cookies
- Pinch salt
- 2 tablespoons butter or coconut oil
- 1/3 cup coconut sugar
- 1 egg
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/2 cup coconut butter
Directions:
- In a food processor, combine the dry ingredients (flour, arrowroot, baking soda, salt, spices, sugar).
- When dry ingredients are well combined, add the butter/coconut oil to the food processor. Pulse several times, until butter is incorporated but not fully mixed in. Add the egg, and then continue to pulse until dough comes together into a sticky ball.
- Remove dough from food processor. Roll into a ball and then flatten into a disk shape. Wrap in plastic wrap and place in fridge for 30 minutes.
- When ready to bake cookies, preheat over to 350°F. Cut two pieces of parchment paper the size of your cookie sheet. Sprinkle one piece with arrowroot powder. Take dough out of the fridge, and unwrap. Place dough on piece of parchment paper, and sprinkle with more arrowroot powder — just a small amount, it keeps the dough from sticking too much. Place the second piece of parchment on top, and then use a rolling pin to roll dough out to a 1/4 of an inch thick. Peel off top parchment paper carefully. Now, using cookie cutters, cut cookie shapes about 1/2 inch apart from each other. I use the reverse cookie-cutting method to make my cookies, because this dough is fragile: Use cookie cutters, and then remove the excess bits (i.e., don’t try to move the cookies them selves) from the parchment. Then, transfer entire sheet of parchment paper to cookie sheet and bake until cookies are puffy and golden — 6-8 minutes. Allow to cool 5-10 minutes before moving to a cooling rack. Repeat this process until the dough has been used!
- Once cookies are completely cool, melt the coconut butter. Spoon melted coconut butter into a frosting bag fitted with a fine frosting tip, and decorate cookies as desired.
