Gluten-Free Gingerbread Christmas Cookies

With Christmas less than a week away now I have been busy preparing. I don’t finish work until Christmas Eve so every spare moment I have I am either wrapping, buying, making or baking! I love how Christmas allows for so much creativity, from homemade wrapping paper, tree decorations to foodie gifts. This year I decided to make my colleagues some homemade gingerbread cookies. I had tried and tested this recipe a few times earlier in the month to ensure they were beautifully festive, moreish and deliciously chewy. They are extremely simple to make, dairy-free, gluten-free, grain-free and refined sugar-free. Perfect to be hung on the tree or packaged up in a clear cellophane gift bag, tied up with a bit of string and ready to give to a friend or loved one. Without blowing my own festive trumpet too loudly, these are the best gingerbread cookies I have ever tried and a recipe I think I will be repeating again and again…and again.

What you need:
To make 14 medium-sized cookies 

Silicon cake pan 28cm x 25cm x 5cm 

*150g / 5.30oz    | Ground almonds Almond flour
*100g / 3.5oz      | Coconut oil, melted
*1 (62g / 2.18oz)| Large egg
*50g / 1.76oz      | Tapioca Flour
*100g / 3.5oz      | Coconut palm sugar
*1 Tsp                   | Mixed Spice
*2 Tsp                  | Ground ginger

Directions:

• Preheat oven t0 180°c
• In to a large mixing bowl place your ground almonds, mixed spice, ground ginger, tapioca flour and coconut palm sugar, mix with a wooden spoon until fully combined
• In to a separate pan melt your coconut oil. Make a well with the dry ingredients and pour in the coconut oil, stir in to dry mixture
• Now add one egg to the mixture and beat in. Keep mixing in until it is fully combined. You will find that the mixture binds together (if you keep mixing!) in to a ball shape and the bowl will be left clean
• In to a cake pan / high edged baking sheet, press your mixture down until it’s about 0.75cm / 1cm thick, if you don’t have a large baking tin then you should split the mixture in two and do one first and then the other (make sure to grease tin first)
• Place in to the oven for approximately 20 minutes until golden brown, they will feel slightly soft still when they come out but this is good, as they will harden as they cool
• As soon as the cookies are out of the oven, using a cutter firmly but gently cut out your shapes and place on to a wire baking wrack / bread board to cool
• If you are going to make these in to Christmas tree decorations, you want to make a small hole in to the cookie whilst it’s still  warm – I used a roasting fork, but you could use a metal skewer too. Once the cookie has then cooled, thread some string through it and hang it straight on your tree
• If you are going to package them up, allow them to fully cool and then place them in to a cellophane gift back, bind with some string and a perhaps a personalised name tag for that individual touch
• These will keep in a biscuit tin / cellophane gift bag for up to 3-4 weeks