Blog

Soft-Baked Ginger Molasses Cookies

November 30, 2017 · Natalie 68 Comments

Soft, chewy, and richly spiced – these Ginger Molasses Cookies with coconut flour, applesauce, almond butter, and a hint of lemon are a healthier holiday treat!

So currently my mind is feeling sorta like: ionlyhaveamonthtobakealltheholidaythingsahhhhhh!

Gingerbread or peppermint? Cookie or fudge? Chocolate covered or frosted with sprinkles? There are so many magical and merry treats I want to get to I feel like I don’t even know where to start. With thanksgiving and all things pumpkin, we have a two (more like four, I’m sure I saw something pumpkin in August) to ease into it and get to every orange idea on the list. But December first is TOMORROW. How friends, how?

I am working on putting the brakes on my gotta-do-it-all brain chatter and just take things one cookie/fruitcake/truffle at a time. Just hone in on the good stuff, the classics, the treats we all really want most. This recipe is both the first cookie and first ginger-y one of the season, and I am in love with how they turned out. I won’t tell you about the part where in my head they went from cookies > blondies > cake > back to cookies. Hush now little brain, slow down and have a Ginger Molasses Cookie.

You know those oversized cookies in the bakery case that always hook you with their soft-baked, sugar-sparkling, GIMME GIMME good looks? The ones that make you think: No one needs a cookie this big, but I deserve one for standing in this line and being a generally badass human. That’s what’s happening here but at home. As much as I love a good hockey puck sized cookie, I have a tendency to make my homemade cookies more of a reasonable tablespoonful-of-dough size. Not sure why, perhaps you can relate?

Well not this time. This time I made them unnecessarily large – I only got six cookies out of a batch that should’ve made a dozen. But there is something extra joyful about a jumbo cookie warm and fresh out of YOUR very own kitchen. The fact that they are so soft and tender and heavily spiced amps up the joy factor big time too, of course. And you get to revel in the yummy spiced scents while they bake – um yankee candle who?

If you are making them for a cookie swap or Christmasy occasion involving lots of other people, you may want to size down a bit. But if you are baking them for yourself as an early December treat to set the holly jolly mood of the month, enjoy every one of those six satisfyingly-sized cookies from Bakery: Your Oven.

So if you are feeling the holiday overwhelm already too, just know these crackly-topped cookies have your back and your easy baking interest at heart ♡

Soft-Baked Ginger Molasses Cookies

★★★★★ 4.3 from 7 reviews

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 12 minutes
Total Time: 22 minutes
Yield: 6 jumbo cookies 1x

Print Recipe

Description

Soft, chewy, and richly spiced – these Ginger Molasses Cookies with coconut flour, applesauce, almond butter, and a hint of lemon are a healthier holiday treat!

Ingredients

Scale

1/2 cup (130g) almond butter (*)
1/2 cup (130g) unsweetened applesauce
1/3 cup (50g) coconut sugar
1/4 cup (80g) blackstrap molasses
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup (60g) coconut flour (**)
1/2 cup (60g) tapioca starch (***)
Optional: cane sugar (for sprinkling on top to make them sparkle)

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350F.
In a mixing bowl, combine the almond butter, applesauce, coconut sugar, and molasses. Beat using an electric mixer until well combined.
Add the lemon juice, spices, vanilla, baking soda, and salt. Mix.
Add the coconut flour and tapioca starch. Mix to form a thick dough. It should be very sticky, but manageable enough to roll into balls. If not (varies with thickness/oily-ness of nut butter usually), add 1-2 more tbsp of coconut flour.
Break off large sections of dough and roll into balls. Arrange on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. I got 6 large cookies, but you could probably get 10-12 normal sized ones.
Sprinkle with sugar (if using) and press lightly to flatten.
Bake for approximately 12 minutes at 350F or until the tops are crackly and the bottom edges just starting to darken.
Remove from the oven and cool for at least 10 minutes before removing from the pan. Enjoy!

Notes

*You can use any nut/seed butter, but I do not recommend peanut butter as the taste is overpowering.

**For an oat option, replace the coconut flour and tapioca starch with 2 cups (240g) oat flour. The batter will not be roll-able, but don’t add more flour or they will be dry and bland. Just spoon the batter on the pan like drop cookies. They are slightly less sweet, so you can add more coconut sugar if desired.

***You can sub cornstarch or arrowroot starch.

CLICK BELOW TO PIN

SaveSave

Vegan Monkey Bread

November 27, 2017 · Natalie 36 Comments

Cinnamon-spiced and sticky-sweet, this gluten-free vegan monkey bread is the ultimate pull-apart treat made with medjool dates, oats, and chia seeds!

THIS POST IS SPONSORED BY NATURAL DELIGHTS.

Monkey bread. Not ginger-spice candy cane cranberry swirl bread with a snowflake streusel. I thought we could all use a minute to adjust to the fact that thanksgiving has passed and Christmas is next on the reasons-to-bake calendar. Crazy, right?

But monkey bread – is it Christmasy? Is it not? See, no one really knows.

And that is the beauty of it. Well that and the fact that it is literally A PAN OF STICKY CINNAMON DOUGH BALLS. We cannot overlook that small detail either.

Reasons monkey bread is holiday apropos:

Exceptionally bake and bring-able. So if you are tasked with supplying the dessert, a couple of loaves of this sweet stuff and everyone will love you forever.
Low-key granny vibe. Anything grandma makes = holiday-y. Exhibit A: cookies.
Cinnamon. Lots of cinnamon.
Also known as pull-apart bread, so unrivaled on share-ability.
Literally glistening with joy (sugar). But unrefined fruity sugar because Natural Delights takes our holiday wishes very seriously.

Reasons monkey bread is not holiday apropos:

It tastes so so good in July too.
That is all.

So while the holiday-ness of monkey bread remains forever unclear and we eat it whenever we damn well please, I’m going to fill you in on all the details of THIS loaf.

True story: I was kinda (deeply) intimidated by the goals I set for this recipe:

Made with oat flour.
No starches (tapioca/arrowroot/cornstarch).
Still soft. Still moist. Still scrumptious. Still obsess-about-able.

Sometimes you just gotta set the loaf-made-of-balls baking bar high for yourself, ya know?

See here’s the thing. Oats are quite absorptive. Which is great if you are making oatmeal, essential even. But it’s not as great if you are making an oil-free batter for bread that has to be thick enough to easily roll into balls but not so thick that it is TOO dry after baking. A pour-able oat flour batter is easy. A roll-able oat flour dough is much trickier.

And that is why full-fat coconut milk is the one and only liquid ingredient in this recipe. It is the key to striking the rich but roll-able balance. So don’t skip it or sub any kind of low-fat carton nonsense. The textural fate of the entire pan of gooey monkey magic is on the line.

Btw. I wanted this recipe to be made with oat flour because many of you asked for an oat option after the last (chocolate) monkey bread I posted. But if you love baking with almond flour (hello wise and dear friend!) then swap the cacao powder in that recipe for 1/2 cup more almond flour and simply skip the cacao in the coating. Wham bam grain-free monkey bread if that’s your jam.

Goal number 1 – check.

Goal number 2. As much as I am tapioca starch’s biggest fan, I get it. You don’t want your entire pantry to be crammed with bags and boxes of a zillion different floury things. So instead of a starch to bind the ballz – chia seeds! Sticky, bind-y, and ground to seedy chia specks.

I was worried they may not have what it takes (overly crumbly texture). Or they may have too much of what it takes (funky gummy texture). But rest assured, they nailed it and neither happened. Sweet little spheres that hold together with a fluffy defined crumb inside. Tapioca who? (Jk, tapioca starch I still love you!)

You may be thinking: Why isn’t date-sweetened on the list of goals? Because monkey bread + medjool dates is a match meant to be. It’s not hard. It’s not a challenge. It’s just the world as it should be operating in monkey-medjool harmony.

There is no lady-like way to say it: this recipe uses a ~~hugeass~~ NOT small quantity of dates. But stick with me, because you deserve the medjool-iest of monkey breads.

The dough itself is completely sweetened with my favorite medjool dates from Natural Delights. Why are they my favorite? Only because they are always super fresh and sweet, easy to find, and even come already pitted in case you like saving time. Do your monkey self a favor -> best medjool dates.

And then there’s the coating, a.k.a. what makes monkey bread the best thing to ever happen in a loaf pan. Date paste smothered on the outside of every doughy ball so once they are all piled in a pan delicious gobs of gooeyness form in between – it’s nothing short of magnificent. And hey, normally that would be gobs of butter and brown sugar, so dates + water is looking pretty good now, huh?

You and me and this lumpy loaf – easing into the Christmas season sticky finger-licking style!