Sugar Free Gingerbread Men cookie recipe

This recipe will impress your family and friends this Christmas. A perfect edible Christmas gift for teachers or to I have also included a nut Free version of the ginger bread man recipe which I used sunflower seeds to make a “Sun flour”.

You can have some fun decorating your gingerbread men cookies into any design you wish, the icing is simple, just desiccated coconut blended until it forms a glossy white liquid which hardens once cooled. I use this in many recipes, called Coconut Butter, for steps on how to make it look within this recipe.

The decorations are the same all natural fruits, seeds and nuts used in the Colourful Christmas Balls recipe.

Sugar Free, Grain Free, Gluten Free Gingerbread Men cookies complete with Sugar Free Icing and all natural decorations with a nut free version too.

Ingredients

For the Cookies

Almonds – 250g whole alonds or almond meal. If you are Nut free use Sunflower seeds

Butter – 50g

Blackstrap Molasses – 1 teaspoon – Spiral Foods brand is only 10% natural sugar, avoid most other brands

Rice Syrup – 1 Tablespoon

Natvia – 1 Tablespoon (none of our recipes have that Stevia after taste as only small amounts are used)

Egg – 1 XL

Vanilla Extract – 1/2 teaspoon

Powdered Ginger – 2 teaspoons

Cinnamon – 1 teaspoon

Nutmeg – 1/2 teaspoon

Salt – 2 Large pinches

Egg White – Whisked to brush over cookies

For the Icing

Coconut Butter – See link below to very simple way to prep it yourself with desiccated coconut or buy Spiral foods coconut paste sachets from Asian aisle at Woolies

For the decorations (optional)

Pepitas – 1 Tablespoon (makes Green colour)

Pistachio – 1 Tablespoon (makes Green colour)

Goji Berries – 2 Tablespoons (ground to make red colour)

Flax seed meal – 1 Tablespoon (is a pale Yellow colour)

Instructions

In your food processor or high speed blender process the almonds (or sunflower seeds if nut free) on high speed until they turn into a flour then keep processing until the flour starts to release oils and starts to get sticky, if you start with almond meal instead of whole almonds, this wont take long but is an important step as you need to release the oils from the nuts

Add all remaining cookie ingredients and bring the dough together on a medium speed

Roll the dough out to about 1/2cm thick between 2 pieces of baking paper or use a silicon pastry mat – the dough will be too wet and sticky to roll out directly with the rolling pin

Lay the rolled cookie dough in the freezer for an hour or a few hours in the fridge, the butter and other oils will need to harden to enable you to successfully cut out and transfer your cookie shapes, you can also roll the cookie dough into a log if you want to cut circle cookies

Once the dough is firm, cut out your desired Christmas shapes, I used stars, Christmas trees, Candy cane and Gingerbread Men

Using a pastry brush, lightly coat each cookie with whisked egg white to give a gloss to the finished cookie

Bake in a preheated 170C oven (fan forced), you will have close to 2 trays of cookies

After about 15 minutes check the cookies, they need to be gently brown on the edges, they may need a few more minutes depending on the thickness

Cool cookies completely on a wire rack and prepare your icing and decorations

Prepare the green decorations by processing the pepitas and pistachio until a fine crumb

Prepare your red sprinkles by processing the goji berries until they are a red crumb

If you need yellow, the Golden flaxmeal is a pale yellow colour which I used for the star on top of the Christmas tree

For the Icing, I almost always have Coconut Butter on hand as you have to make a large amount and I use it in many things, see the steps on how to make it within this recipe or buy some from a heath food shop or Woolworths Asian aisle have coconut paste sachets which is the same thing (processed desiccated coconut until liquid which sets hard) these sachets can be handy too…anyway if you are making it now, the easy steps are within this recipe

Warm up some Coconut butter until liquid again, using a toothpick decorate your gingerbread men with the liquid coconut butter

Sprinkle some of your green or red decorations on top (or use a toothpick to place)

Leave the decorated gingerbread cookies in the fridge for the icing to set, the icing will stay on fine when left out of fridge for a while but best to store cold to prevent the coconut butter warming up and sliding off

The kids adored these beautiful treats and they will make gorgeous Christmas party treats or gifts, a very healthy surprise for an unhealthy time of year

I gave one more edible Christmas gift idea to show you so sign up to newsletter below if you are keen to check it out

Enjoy xoxSha