Today’s post is the sort of cookie recipe that you make when the pantry is close to bare. Without egg, dairy, wheat, gluten, nuts, soy, or peanuts (someone might put fish in cookies…but…), they are close to allergen free. I did add ground flaxseeds, as gluten-free bakery generally benefits from their stickiness. The original recipe doesn’t have the add-ins of cranberries and candied ginger, either in Fannie Farmer or on Quick Easy Cheap Healthy, but I couldn’t resist. Chocolate and almonds might be another good combination.

The resulting cookies are good: chewy and spicy. The molasses is a dominant flavor, so a light molasses might be better if you want to emphasize the ginger more than the molasses. They would make delicious ice cream sandwiches! The brown rice flour does add a little grittiness to the texture, so I’ll probably use my standard flour mixture the next time I make them. Best of all, they hold together.

The recipe was selected from adapted from Quick Easy Cheap Healthy‘s blog for the Secret Recipe Club. While her blog contains plenty of wheat, she does have a small child with a wheat allergy, so some recipes have a gluten-free version. The following was one of them.

On a side note, she did a lovely post on how to be a good host for someone with food allergies and a fun series on packed lunches. (Oh, btw, I was one of those kids who ate PB sandwiches for lunch every day! As an adult, that translates to eating the same pot of bean/lentil soup all week for lunch.)

Ginger Cookies

1/3 cup molasses
3 T coconut oil
1 c brown rice flour + 2 T tapioca starch
1/8 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 t ginger
1/4 t cinnamon
2 T flaxseeds, ground
1/4 c chopped candied ginger
1/4 c dried cranberries
Dash ground cloves

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease cookie sheets, or place liners in muffin tins. (I’ve found cookies and bars baked in muffin tins hold together better. The extra structure helps compensate for the lack of gluten.)

Mix together the flour, starch, spices, salt, and baking soda. Pour the molasses into a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and stir in the coconut oil. When it is mixed, add the dry ingredients, cranberries, and candied ginger. Spoon into muffin tins (~1 T per full size muffin cup or ~ 1 t per mini-muffin tin), or roll into balls and bake for 8 -10 minutes. Cool until warm and them remove promptly. If you remove them immediately, they’ll fall apart. If you let them cool too long, you’ll never get them out.