Healthier Gingerbread Cookies
Classic gingerbread cookies, made more healthy! These gingerbread cookies are easy to make with whole wheat flour, molasses and coconut oil.
Updated by Kathryne Taylor on September 19, 2024
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Too soon for gingerbread cookies? I hear everyone who put up their Christmas tree this weekend shouting, “No!” These are for you, my cinnamon candle-burning, Nat King Cole-playing friends. I appreciate your enthusiasm.
I usually get all bah-humbug Christmas baby this time of year, since the holiday completely overshadows my December 25th birthday if I’m not careful. I’m already planning my 30th birthday celebrations (with help, thankfully!) and have resolved to embrace the holiday cheer this time around. I might even put up a Christmas tree. A tiny one, with white Christmas lights. That sounds lovely.
I’ll probably make more batches of gingerbread cookies to share with friends this year, too, now that I’ve perfected the recipe. They’re so fun to make! I made a few simple substitutions to turn classic gingerbread cookies into healthier gingerbread cookies, without sacrificing flavor.
The result is a dough that is remarkably easy to make (no mixer required) and manage (it might as well be Play-Doh!).
How to Make Healthier Gingerbread Cookies
My substitutions include swapping coconut oil for butter, coconut sugar for brown sugar and whole wheat pastry flour for all purpose. All of those ingredients are becoming more mainstream now as their health benefits become more apparent.
Whole wheat pastry flour is one of my favorite subtle nutrition upgrades. It possesses all of the health benefits of whole wheat flour, but it’s more finely ground, lighter in taste and produces marvelously tender whole grain goodies.
It’s a great substitute for all-purpose flour in cookies, pie crusts and in many recipes that call for baking powder and/or baking soda for leavening. (You don’t want to use whole wheat pastry flour in yeasted recipes, like pizza dough. It just won’t work.)
These cookies turned out perfectly with 100 percent whole wheat pastry flour. I don’t think anyone would be able to tell that these cookies are made with whole grain flour! They’re crisp, spiced and delicious.
Molasses & Spice Notes
You can control the level of spice and flavor intensity by carefully choosing your molasses. I tried a lighter molasses and blackstrap molasses. The light molasses produces cookies with lighter color and flavor, naturally. If you’re making these cookies for kids with sensitive palates, you might want to choose light molasses and maybe even use half of the spices specified below.
If you want dark, intense cookies with an almost dark chocolate-level of richness, use blackstrap molasses and the full amount of spices. Blackstrap molasses offers greater nutritional value as well, since both the flavors and minerals present in molasses are more concentrated. Who would have guessed that a by-product in sugar production could be so high in potassium, iron, Vitamin B6, calcium and magnesium?
How to Decorate Your Cookies
You also have a few options when it comes to decorating your cookies. You could enjoy them plain, of course. They are not overtly sweet, though, and they look more festive with some decoration.
Options include sprinkling the cookie dough shapes with sparkling turbinado (raw) sugar or dusting them with additional coconut sugar before baking. You can ice them with the lemony icing offered below, which requires some powdered sugar (here’s how to make your own with less refined sugar) and/or sprinkle them with powdered sugar, which looks like snow. You could use a traditional royal icing, which calls for raw egg yolks and completely hardens on the cookie. Or, you could melt chocolate chips and drizzle chocolate on top. It’s up to you!
Healthier Gingerbread Cookies
Here’s a healthy version of your favorite classic gingerbread cookies! This gingerbread cookie recipe is healthier because of a few simple substitutions—I substituted whole wheat pastry flour for all purpose flour, coconut oil for butter and coconut sugar for brown sugar. See notes provided in the paragraphs above for tips and suggestions on choosing your molasses and decorations. Recipe yields around 32 cookies, depending on their size.
Ingredients
Cookies
- 3 cups (310 grams) whole wheat pastry flour*, plus more for work surface
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- ¾ teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ teaspoon ground cloves
- ½ teaspoon finely ground black pepper
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ cup melted coconut oil
- ½ cup unsulphured molasses (use regular molasses for lighter, somewhat spicy cookies or blackstrap molasses for very spicy, intensely flavored cookies—or a mixture of both)
- ½ cup packed coconut sugar
- 1 large egg
- Powdered sugar, for dusting (optional)
Lemon icing (optional)
- ½ cup powdered sugar (here’s how to make your own)
- ¼ teaspoon lemon zest (optional, for intense lemon flavor)
- 2 ¼ teaspoons lemon juice
Instructions
- In a medium mixing bowl, combine the flour, ginger, cinnamon, salt, cloves, pepper, baking soda and baking powder. Whisk until blended.
- In a small mixing bowl, combine the coconut oil and molasses and whisk until combined. Add the coconut sugar and whisk until blended. (If the sugar is gloppy and won’t incorporate into the mixture, warm the mixture for about 20 seconds in the microwave or over low heat on the stove, just until you can whisk it all together.) Add the egg and whisk until the mixture is thoroughly blended.
- Pour the liquid mixture into the dry and mix just until combined. (If it seems like you don’t have enough liquid, just keep mixing!) Divide the dough in half. Shape each half into a round disc about 1 inch thick and wrap it in plastic wrap. Place both discs in the refrigerator and chill until cold—about 1 hour, or up to overnight.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit with racks in the middle and upper third of the oven. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper. Lightly flour your working surface and roll out one of your discs out until it’s ¼ inch thick. If the dough is very hard or crumbly, just roll it as best you can and then let it rest for a few minutes to warm up. Repeat until you’ve successfully rolled the dough to ¼ inch thickness.
- Use cookie cutters to cut out cookie shapes and place each cookie on a parchment-lined baking sheet, leaving about ½ inch of space around each one (this dough just barely expands during baking). Combine your dough scraps into a ball and roll them out again, repeating until you have used up all of your dough. Repeat with remaining disc. (If you’d like to decorate the cookies with granulated sugar like turbinado or extra coconut sugar, sprinkle it onto the cookies now.)
- Place baking sheets in the oven, one on the middle rack and one on the upper. Bake for 8 to 11 minutes; for softer cookies, pull them out around 8 minutes and for more crisp cookies, bake for up to 11 minutes. The cookies will further crisp as they cool. Place the baking sheets on cooling racks to cool.
- If you’d like to ice the cookies and/or sprinkle them with powdered sugar, wait until they have completely cooled to do so. To make the icing, in a small bowl, combine the powdered sugar, optional lemon zest and the lemon juice. Whisk until thoroughly blended. Transfer the icing into a small Ziploc bag, squeeze out any excess air and seal the bag. Cut off a tiny piece of one of the lower corners and squeeze icing through the hole to decorate the cookies as desired. The frosting will harden eventually, but it won’t ever be as indestructible as royal icing.
- If you’d like to sift powdered sugar over the cookies, do it now. Wait until the icing has firmed up (about 1 hour) before carefully stacking the cookies in a storage container. Cookies will keep for up to 1 week at room temperature.
Notes
Recipe adapted from Martha Stewart, on Smitten Kitchen’s recommendation. Recipe updated 12/17/18 to remove whole wheat flour as an option—it doesn’t work well. My sincere apologies to anyone who was disappointed by their cookies.
*Flour notes: This recipe works great with whole wheat pastry flour. You can find generally whole wheat pastry flour at well-stocked grocery stores, as well as health food stores. All-purpose flour will also work. The dough tends to be hard and crumbly when made with regular whole wheat flour so I don’t recommend it. Also, to measure your flour properly, spoon the flour into your measuring cups and level off the top with a knife.
Make it vegan/egg free: I haven’t tried, but based on other recipes, I think you could successfully substitute a flax egg in this recipe, or maybe even use 3 tablespoons applesauce instead of the egg.
Nutrition
The information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice. See our full nutrition disclosure here.
This post was created in partnership with Bob’s Red Mill and I received compensation for my participation. Opinions are my own, always. Thank you for supporting the sponsors who support C+K!
Love, love, love, this recipe. I’ve made then twice so far. Great without icing – hard to stop eating them.
Thank you, Cada!
Hi Kate! I followed the recipe and baked for 8 minutes but still turned out very dry and crispy unfortunately. What should i change/add more of?
Thanks!
Hi! I’m sorry to hear that. Did you over stir your flour? Make sure you spoon and level the flour so you don’t get too much.
Love your recipes! I asked for your cookbook for Christmas so hopefully Santa comes through :) do you think I could make these gluten free? My son loves ginger bread and I was hoping to make cookies- we love your ginger bread cake recipe using 1:1 GF four. Someone else in the comments mentioned using almond four. Do you think that will work?
Hi! You could try an all purpose gluten free flour. Let me know if it works! I don’t recommend almond flour as you usually have to adapt it a lot to make it work, if it will, as an alternative.
Somehow the dough consistency was off for me despite following the recipe. It was solid as a rock after refrigerating so I let it thaw but even then the dough was still crumbly. I don’t want to rate the recipe because it’s probably something I did, I just don’t know what. I usually have great luck with recipes on this site.
Hi Erin, I’m sorry to hear that. How did you measure the flour? I wonder if you had too much.
I did as suggested and made sure the flour measurement was flat across. It did end up turning out okay in terms of taste but I had to use a lot of elbow grease to roll out and could only cut one or two cookies out each time I rolled because the edges were too cracked. Maybe I’ll try a little less flour next time because I like that this is a little bit healthier of an option than most recipes and is dairy-free.
Have you ever tried to make this same recipe but with almond flour and monk fruit sweetener instead? If so, did it turn out?
Hi, I haven’t. Almond flour isn’t typically a great 1:1 substitute.
Hi Katie!
Can I use unsalted butter in place of the coconut oil and replace the coconut sugar with light/dark brown sugar?
Hi Sue, for best results I recommend following the recipe as written. Baking is precise so changing inputs can really impact your outcome.
These turned out great! I used maple syrup instead of coconut sugar. The dough was easy to work with after chilling. I decorated them with royal icing. Tasty!
I’m glad you enjoyed it, Sandra! Thank you for your review.
Great recipe for a gingerbread house! This is my second year using this recipe for that purpose. I did roll the dough out thinner than described so I was guaranteed a stiff cookie (to 1/8 inch instead of a 1/4) and at that thickness cooked them for 6 minutes. I like to cut out windows to fill with crushed candy to melt into a stained glass window (baked on parchment)and that timing works well for the 350 degree oven.
I did need to add some additional flour (used fresh milled soft white wheat flour) and the 310 grams wasn’t quite enough.
Hi, Kate. I love your recipes, and I’ve found that they fit in quite well with the roughly “Mediterranean type diet” we consume in our household. (I’ve subscribed – which I have rarely ever done). The gingerbread cookies are a terrific find, as I used to bake like crazy at Christmas, and wanted something healthier to keep the tradition alive. Many thanks!
Also, you turned me on to the Red Mill Whole Wheat Pastry flour. Wow! I love this flour! I did want to note that a cup of Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat Pastry flour should weigh 120 g (looked it up on the Red Mill site), thus making the 3 cups 360 grams, which it did for me. Those with a reliable Baker’s scale may want to weigh it out. I had no problem whatsoever, though, using three level cups. It was perfect in consistency, and not at all difficult to blend.
Thanks again!
Karen
This is the second year making these and they are excellent. Thank you for such a great recipe
Used butter instead of coconut oil and light brown sugar instead of coconut sugar. Baked for 8 Mon, they’re nice and chewy with a little spice and not too sweet! Will def make these again
That’s great to hear, Trish! Thank you for your review.
Used whole wheat flour (not pastry flour) so probably my mistake as it calls for pastry flour but I didn’t see that before I started. It did not turn out. Super crumbly dough wouldn’t even hold together, increased some liquids but just made it worse. Bummer because I wasted the ingredients, will try another recipe.
Hi Kris, I’m sorry it didn’t turn out for you. Yes, the flour is important to get good results. I hope you try it again!
So excited to make these for my friends holiday party this weekend! Very random question, if i wanted to make them spiked and add bourbon, would it be possible to add a little bit of in the batter?
I haven’t tried it so I can’t say for sure. Sorry!
Not sure what went wrong, but this recipe didn’t turn out for me…. Dough remained crumbly. I had to trash it :(
Hi Tamra, I’m sorry to hear that. How did you measure the flour?
I just made these this morning. So good! I used 1/3 cup of maple syrup in place of the coconut sugar, and they are perfect – not too sweet, but still treat-like. However, that will not stop me from eating them for breakfast. I’ve been reading this blog for so many years; I can’t believe I waited this long to make these!
I’m so glad you finally made them, Molly! I appreciate your review.
Thank you for this recipe. I made it three times this holiday season. I didn’t have coconut ingredients so I used 1 stick melted butter and 1/2 c brown sugar. After round three, I find the best tasting is without the pepper and increasing the cinnamon and ginger amounts to 1 tbls each. The flour used was Red Mill stoneground whole wheat. Added 1 tbls milk to final mixture.
Thanks again!
I’m glad you were able to make them! Thanks for sharing what worked well for you, Diane.
I’m in love with this recipe! Do you have any other recipes you can use a cookie cutter with? Your recipes are always my go to!
You could try it with some of my others, but I don’t have others designed to roll out.
Can we substitute the coconut sugar with white or brown sugar?
Hi Kaysey, others have tried it and had good results. Let me know how they turn out for you!
Dough was wayyy to crumbly. Used regular flour. Finally added more oil and it was so hard to mix. Ended up hard and thick. Used another recipe and had no problem rolling and cutting.
I’m sorry to hear that. How did you measure your flour?
Gingerbread cookies are my favorite at this time of year, and I’m thrilled to have a healthier recipe! Thank you! Also, I used two of your recipes for Thanksgiving dinner–stuffed squash and argula, sweet potato, and wild rice salad. Superb!
Hello, does this recipe work for diabetes person? I have a friend is diabetic and I want to make something for him but all recipes I have seen don’t look appealing to me
I can’t provide specific guidance to health needs as I’m not a registered dietitian. Sorry!
This turned out so yummy! I discovered a way to avoid the flour mess. Instead of wrapping in plastic wrap, I wrapped them in parchment paper and when I was ready to roll, rolled them directly on the parchment paper with no issues sticking. Will definitely repeat this recipe, thanks!
Hey!! If you used white flour would it be really unhealthy?
I recommend this best as written. You can try it. If you do, let me know how it turns out!
I’m confused about the direction to “mix until just combined” and “if it seems like you don’t have enough liquid, just keep mixing.” Mine came out really dry and would barely hold together. It’s in the fridge now, but I don’t see how that would make it easier to work with.
How did it turn out?
This is my 4th year making them. It is now our traditional gingerbread house and compared to the kits, so much better tasting. It is our tradition and my almost 13 year old son can’t wait!
How fun! I love that you use this recipe, Elena. Thank you for sharing.
Dough tastes delicious but we had a hard time rolling the dough as it was very crumbly. Any suggestions? We decided to freeze the second half of the dough and see if it works better. Happy holidays!
Hi Jay, sorry for my delay. How did these turn out?
These are my go-to. I love that they’re not overly sweet and that they don’t use white sugar or flour, though you’d never know by tasting them that they’re healthier. We make them with a flax egg, and them always come out great. The icing makes them sweeter, of course, and the lemon is such a lovely complement to the gingerbread. My kids, now 2 and 4, and I have made them every year for Santa. Thank you for giving us a fun tradition that’s manageable on this busy, bust day and that I can feel good about my kids eating.
I love to hear that, Emily! Thank you for your review.
It was so crumbly I followed all of the instructions and it still wasn’t working. Had to add milk and more flour. In the process of lost its sweetness so I added confectionery sugar on top when they were done.
I’m sorry to hear that, Jessica. How did you measure the flour? If there was too much or if it was over stirred, that would impact your results.