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‘Tis the season for Christmas baking! We indulge at the holidays, walking the line between our healthy lifestyle and the joy that comes from once-a-year treats like soy egg nog and gingerbread cookies. Our past two weekends have been spent running repeatedly to Bulk Barn and firing up the oven for batch after batch of yuletide cheer. Josh dubbed these tiny, intensely ginger chocolate sparkle cookies “deer turds” because they’re small, brown and come in piles. Maybe Santa’s reindeer poop out sophisticated gingerbread morsels in a holly and fir forest, but I doubt it.

These are the brainchild of Heidi Swanson (101cookbooks.com), modified to be a bit simpler and entirely gluten-free. Since we’ll be sharing these with visiting family and not eating them all ourselves, we used butter. It’s a practical concession that we don’t use coconut oil in all our Christmas baking. We’ve got to save money to buy our stocking stuffers somehow! Coconut oil would work, if your dietary constraints require and your holiday budget allows! This recipe makes more than enough cookies to share, and Christmas cheer follows these deer turds wherever they go.

Ingredients:

  • 100g 70% dark chocolate bar
  • 1 cup brown rice flour
  • 1⁄3 cup tapioca flour
  • 1/3 cup potato starch
  • 1/3 cup coconut flour
  • 2 tsp xanthan gum
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 4 1/2 tsp ground ginger
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter
  • 1/4 cup unsulphered molasses
  • 2/3 cup coconut palm sugar
  • 1 1/2 tbsp grated fresh ginger (peeled)
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 cup natural cane sugar

Preparation:

Preheat your oven to 350°F/180°C. If you can fit two baking sheets on one oven rack, keep the rack in the centre of the oven. If you can’t, put the racks in the top and bottom third of the oven, and prepare yourself for the great mid-bake rotation. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

Use a sharp knife to shave/really finely chop the chocolate bar.

Sift the flours, potato starch and xanthan gum into a large bowl. Whisk in the baking soda, ground ginger and salt.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat. While it’s melting grate your fresh ginger, and measure out the palm sugar and molasses. When the butter just melts, pull the saucepan off the heat, and whisk in the ginger, sugar, molasses and egg. Once you’ve got everything all uniform and gooey, pour the mixture into the dry ingredients and stir until just mixed. Mix in the chocolate.

Put the cane sugar in a small bowl, off to the side of your baking sheets. Roll the dough into small balls, and coat them in sugar before putting them on the parchment. The cookies don’t spread out too much, so you can put them 5cm apart. Bake the cookies for 8 minutes total, switching the sheets from top rack to bottom after 4 minutes if you have a conventional oven like we do. Once done I slide the cookies on the parchment paper onto cooling racks, so that I can keep going with the next batch right away. Just remember to put more parchment on your baking sheets before round #2!

Bon appétit!