Ginger Snap Cookies

[Gaby]

YAY! We finally baked wonderful ginger snap cookies, egg and butter and gluten free! It was our first time, so we tried to be as careful as a surgeon performing heart surgery and as accurate as a linguist will be. We translated all the measurements to the metric system, so we would actually understand what we were doing... We crosschecked all the ingredients as we were putting them to make sure we would not mess up the recipe, and we measured everything carefully. It was really our first time! But everybody was in cookie heaven and after a few hours, they were all gone. So here is the recipe for 60 servings (worry not, all of them will be eaten).

60 Servings

* 4 cups buckwheat flour
* 2 tablespoons ground ginger
* 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1-1/2 cups shortening (ghee butter)
* 1 cup of xylitol and 1 cup of rapadura (cane sugar)
* 20 grams of egg replacer in 80ml of water (equals 2 eggs)
* 1/2 cup dark molasses
* 2/3 cup cinnamon sugar (or cane sugar with 1 teaspoon of cinnamon)


DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Mix the flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt into a mixing bowl.
Stir the mixture to blend evenly.
3. Place the shortening into a mixing bowl and beat until creamy. Gradually beat in the xylitol and the cane sugar.
Beat in the egg replacer, and dark molasses. Sift 1/3 of the flour mixture into the shortening mixture;
stir to thoroughly blend. Sift in the remaining flour mixture, and mix together until a soft dough forms.
Pinch off small amounts of dough and roll into 1 inch (2,5cm) diameter balls between your hands.
Roll each ball in cinnamon sugar, and place 2 inches (5 cm) apart on an ungreased baking sheet.
4. Bake in preheated oven until the tops are rounded and slightly cracked, about 10 minutes.
Cool cookies on a wire rack. Store in an air tight container.

Et voilà! Healthy ginger snap cookies :) Well, moderation is advised...

 

[RedFox]

Being a big fan of cookies I may give this a go!!
One question, I've not heard of egg substitute before??

Googling it shows up some ingredients that may not be advisable... fwiw
_http://www.goodnessdirect.co.uk/cgi-local/frameset/detail/471310_Allergycare_Whole_Egg_Replacer__200g.html

Soy protein isolate, potato starch, stabiliser E465.

Not to put a dampener on your recipe...just wanted to give you a heads up
Is there something else that can be substituted??

I'm still trying to find my way through finding replacements for ingredients.

*Edit* nevermind.....found out that only some contain soy it seems

_http://www.ener-g.com/store/detail.aspx?section=8&cat=8&id=97

Potato Starch, tapioca starch flour, leavening (calcium lactate [not derived from dairy], calcium carbonate, citric acid), sodium carboxymethylcellulose, methylcellulose

 

[Gaby]

Yeah, perhaps in a biostore you'll find a friendly egg substitute. At the beginning we were very ambitious making big cookies, but smaller ones turn out to be more crunchy. :)

 

[Laura]

I can vouch for the perfection of these cookies! They were divine and had a wonderful texture and SO good for you!

For those who don't know how good buckwheat is, just check the diet and health forum and read up on it. It is loaded with magnesium, phytonutrients, is anti-inflammatory, helps make cells more sensitive to insulin and thereby helps to stabilize blood sugar and regulate insulin resistance.

We have been making buckwheat crepes almost every day as a bread substitute. You can put all kinds of things in there and just roll them up: meat, veggies, eggs, (no eggs for me, though), jellies, re-fried beans and onions, and so on and on. Sweet or savory, they really make your tummy happy.

With buckwheat crepes and cookies, who needs evil wheat at all????

 

[Chu]

Yeah, I have to agree with the fact that they were unexpectedly delicious! And being such beginners in the art of making pastry, it was really exciting and fun! It is also interesting to learn about the chemistry processes involved in cooking.

Buckwheat is really great. And it works perfectly well even when you use it on its own. When we first started avoiding gluten, Laura used to make (also delicious) bread with rice flour, guar gum, potato starch and other different flours. It was too complicated for pastry newbies like us because we didn't always know the correct proportions. Now, with buckwheat, it's easy! And even better for our health.

So, Pysche and I have become a living proof that the cook in the movie Ratatouille was right. Everybody can cook! :P

Try them out! They are yummy when you dip them in rice milk too!

 

[Mark]

I made this recipe with quinoa flour instead of buckwheat, and replaced the cane sugar with extra xylitol, and it came out great!

Thanks for posting it :)

 

[Mrs.Tigersoap]

Today I made ginger snaps. Well, a part of me did. I don't know what happened, I was so all over the place, I could not get anything right!

I took the recipe from the Dot Connector Mag. I started grating ginger, put it in the bowl with the buckwheat flour. I then realized that it was supposed to be powdered ginger. So I added some. Then, for some reason, I totally missed the second paragraph which talks about creaming the shortening with the sugar then adding sifted flour. So, instead, I put all the ingredients in the mixing bowl directly. Since I did not have enough ghee, I melted lard and poured it in the mix. Then I read the last paragraph of the recipe saying that you have to roll balls of dough into the cinnamon-sugar mixture and I realized that I had actually poured it in the mixing bowl already! So I proceded to roll balls anyway, put them on my baking sheet and realized that my balls were so big that it made 20 cookies instead of 60 ! I've put it all in the oven and of course it had to cook for twice as long, so I nearly burned them!
They dried and hardened (somewhat) for an hour and basically tasted like spicy Play-doh mixed with sand! Tigersoap, always the gentleman, ate three!

I thought that sharing this cooking disaster would help me work on my self importance. And be a good reminder to self-remember when I cook next time…
I guess I just realized that cooking is also doing the Work :P

 

[3DStudent]

You're a good sport about it Mrs. Tigersoap. If it's any consolation, I actually thought it would taste pretty good just from reading your description of making them. I've made some dry cookies before, that's one thing I can't get right.

 

[Tigersoap]

They dried and hardened (somewhat) for an hour and basically tasted like spicy Play-doh mixed with sand! Tigersoap, always the gentleman, ate three!

Ah hon, anything you do tastes like heaven :)

 

[Mrs.Tigersoap]

You're a good sport about it Mrs. Tigersoap. If it's any consolation, I actually thought it would taste pretty good just from reading your description of making them. I've made some dry cookies before, that's one thing I can't get right.

Thanks for your support 3D! :D

ah hon, anything you do tastes like heaven