-
×
Freeze-Dried Mango, 30g
1 × $17.95 -
×
Pumpkin Pie Spice Blend
1 × $14.00 -
×
Tex-Mex Spice Blend - FODMAPS Friendly Version
1 × $36.00 -
×
Massaman Spice Blend
1 × $14.00
Subtotal: $81.95
Baking, Breakfasts, Christmas, Dairy Free, Desserts, Eggs, Gluten Free, Holidays, Lunchbox, Naturally Sweetened, Nuts, Snacks, Thermomix, Vegetarian, Wholefood
Gluten Free Gingerbread Men
I made gluten free gingerbread men people this year based on Gluten Free Girl’s recipe, with a few tweaks of my own, and they turned out great – so spicy and crispy, just how I like them! I’m sure these would have been yummy with the usual pre-ground spices, but I decided to grind the fresh spices myself for a stronger flavour, and it made them soooo good! I know this recipe seems like a lot of bother, but it really is worth it. You don’t have to do it all in one day – you can make the flour mix and dough one day, make the cookies another day, and ice them another day if you like. And don’t feel like this is just a Christmas recipe – use different shapes of cookie cutters and make them all year long! Below is the gluten free flour mix I’ve developed (with a bit of inspiration from Gluten Free Girl) – it makes great biscuits and cakes! (Makes 1kg of baking mix.) If you don’t have the time or the ingredients to make the mix, go ahead and use a bought pre-mix, it should work fine. They can also be made with spelt or wheat flour – you may just need to adjust the amount of flour to make the dough the right texture for rolling out. Note: You can find fine sea salt and Vanilla powder for this recipe in my online store!
Try my new Gingerbread Spice Blend!
Simplify this recipe by using 3 Tablespoons of Quirky Cooking Gingerbread Spice Blend in place of the:
- 1 whole nutmeg
- 3 whole cloves
- 4 black peppercorns
- 1 vanilla bean, halved
- 1–2 cinnamon sticks
- 1/4 tsp cardamom seeds
- orange zest
- 2 tsp ground ginger powder
(Add spice blend in step 3 with almond meal. Fresh orange zest may be included if desired – there is dried orange zest in the spice blend.)
Gluten Free Flour Mix
Ingredients
Units
- 200g raw brown rice
- 50g dry buckwheat (or dry chick peas)
- 50g chia seeds
- 150g sorghum flour (also called ‘Jowar Attah’ in Indian stores)
- 150g potato starch or mung bean starch
- 250g sweet rice flour (also called glutinous rice flour)
- 200g arrowroot flour (or tapioca or corn starch)
Instructions
- Grind raw brown rice, dry buckwheat, chia seeds in Thermomix on speed 9 for 1 1/2 minutes.
- Add sorghum flour, potato starch, sweet rice flour, arrowroot flour and mix on speed 6 until well combined, using TM spatula to help it along.
- Pour into a storage container.
Notes
- You can grind up the glutinous rice/dried arrowroot/tapioca/sorghum yourself – just make sure it’s really fine, and grind in 250g batches for 1-2 mins/sp 9.
Gingerbread Men
Ingredients
Units
- 1 whole nutmeg
- 3 cloves
- 4 black peppercorns
- 1 vanilla bean, chopped in bits
- 1 cinnamon stick (or more if you like)
- a pinch of cardamom seeds
- 40g roasted almonds, unsalted (can leave out – just add 40g more flour mix)
- 170g Rapadura or coconut sugar
- zest of 1 or 2 oranges (preferably organic)
- 1 inch of fresh ginger (peeled and cut in quarters)
- 560g Gluten Free Flour Mix
- 1 1/2 tsp xanthum gum (or 2 Tbspns ground chia seeds)
- 2 tsp ground ginger powder (if you like it really gingery!)
- 3/4 tsp fine sea salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 230g unsalted butter or ghee or coconut oil
- 220g molasses
- 1 large egg
Instructions
- Grind the dry, whole spices and roasted almonds first, on speed 9 for 1 minute, until finely ground.
- Add Rapadura or coconut sugar, zest of 1 or 2 oranges, fresh ginger and grind on speed 9, scraping down now and then until everything is finely ground.
- Add Gluten Free Flour Mix, xanthum gum, ginger powder, sea salt, baking soda and mix on speed 6 for 15 seconds using spatula to help combine mixture. Pour mixture into a bowl and set aside.
- Place unsalted butter, molasses, egg in Thermomix bowl and mix on speed 5-6 for 10 seconds.
- Scrape down sides, then with blades still running on speed 5, slowly add dry mixture through the hole in the lid, mixing until well combined. Towards the end you’ll need to use the spatula to help it along.
- Divide the dough into four pieces, wrapping each one in a piece of plastic wrap, flatten to a disc shape, and refrigerate. Leave them in the fridge for a few hours, or up to three days – this makes the flavours stronger.
- Now for the tricky bit: cutting out the cookies and getting them onto the baking trays without mangling them! I found the easiest way to do this is to roll out one disc of well-chilled dough on a silicon mat, with a piece of baking paper on top of the dough so it doesn’t stick to the rolling pin. Roll it to about 5mm thick, or thicker if you like thick cookies.
- Bake the cookies in a pre-heated 180 degree oven, until the centres are firm to the touch. Be careful not to burn them – if they’re thin they cook in 10 minutes or less. Cool on racks before icing.
I just keep gathering the bits of dough together in balls, chilling them, and re-rolling and cutting them – they all seem to taste the same and not get too tough, probably because you don’t need any flour to roll them out with, if you use the baking paper. Now for the icing! I didn’t want to use refined white sugar, so I decided to use xylitol so I’d still get white icing, instead of Rapadura, which I usually use. It worked great! This icing hardens as it dries.
Note: This recipe was developed in 2010 – I no longer use xylitol as we are more focused on gut health now. A gut-healthy alternative would be to make my Honey-Sweetened Marshmallow recipe, and pipe the warm mixture onto biscuits to decorate. Store in the freezer.
Royal icing made with xylitol
2014-07-22 03:00:03
Ingredients
- 100g xylitol
- 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
- 2 tblspns cornflour
- 1 egg white
Instructions
- Grind xylitol, cream of tartar, cornflour on speed 9, scraping down now and then, until very fine.
- Insert butterfly and add egg white, mixing on speed 4 for about 4 or 5 minutes, until thick.
- Sit a zip-loc sandwich bag in a glass and drape the edges over the sides. Pour the icing into the bag, squeeze the air out, and seal. Snip a TINY hole in one corner of the bag.
Quirky Cooking https://quirkycooking.com.au/
We made gingerbread stars too…
As you can see, my kids wanted to add some dark chocolate chips and craisins to theirs…
…and one of them made a skeleton gingerbread man!
Have fun!
Yummy! You are so creative with your cooking! I wish I could have you come to my house and instill your love of cooking and creating in the kitchen to me! I’ll keep reading and pray for some inspiration. Merry Christmas!
Hi love your recipes, just wondering where you get sorghum flour? i was told it was an american thing? thanks 🙂
Thanks Julie – I’d love to come do some cooking with you! 😀 Have a lovely Christmas!
Hi Penny – you can buy sorghum flour in Australia… I get mine bulk through a co-op – we buy from Demeter Farm Mill in NSW. You could ask your health food shop – a lot of them buy from Demeter too (ours does). It’s a really great flour for gluten free baking, as it has more fibre than most gf flours, and I think it helps the texture of gf baking to be better.
Jo 🙂
Just a note for Penny regarding sorghum flour – if you live where you have access to an Indian grocery store, sorghum flour is sold as Jowar flour.
Thanks Jo for the GF gingerbread recipe – I was feeling left out this Christmas, smelling the wonderful aromas as my daughter made several batches of non-GF gingerbread!
Oh, thank you for that Judith – I didn’t know about Jowar flour!! Hope you get to make some gingerbread for yourself soon 🙂 If you can’t be bothered with gingerbread men, try the Peppernuts!
can i use a flour mix thats not gluten free if i dont need to worry about being gluten free….what quantites??
Yes, you can – just use 600g of flour instead of the almonds and gf flours. 🙂
what could i use if i wanted corn free as well (free from corn dairy gluten soy)
I’d also like to make these without the corn flour. I have everything else already including all the pre ground spices, so i’m keen to do this ASAP. Perhaps in the flour I will use an extra 50g sorghum and an extra 50g tapioca. In the icing I’ll try using tapioca. I have found it to work as closely to cornflour as I can get without actually using cornflour. What do you think Jo? Thanks Lorna.
Yes, definitely!
How did you go with using tapioca in place of the cornflour Lorna? I’m interested in a corn free version too.
Heather
Tapioca works perfectly and can be used interchangeably with cornflour. Also arrowroot is another option.
Is there a way I can replace the rapadura/coconut sugar and molasses with honey? Honey and xylitol are the only sweeteners my son can have.
Yes, you could – try changing the molasses to honey, and using xylitol instead if the rapadura – make it half the amount though (of xylitol).
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hi.
I have a question on the brown rice. Can that be replaced with white rice? My daughter cant eat brown rice.
Thanks
Hi Jo,
Thanks for a yummy recipe. Are the cardamon “seeds” correct or is it supposed to be coriander seeds?
I only ask because cardamon are generally referred to as “pods” rather than seeds and them seem a bit big to me to have their measurement referred to as a “pinch”.
Thanks!
Bel
I was wondering about the cardamom seeds too – does this mean the little black seed inside the pods?
Can I use ordinary flour with the almonds? I love almond meal but I don’t need to do gluten free and it’s a lot of specialty ingredients to get hold of 🙂
Hi Jo, thanks so much for making healthy baking acheivable and soo soo tasty! I keep making your goodies and hubby always says… “If this is healthy, sign me up to the movement” lol. I have only just learnt about xylitol recently and wondering if I would just get it from a Health food shop? Also, would changing the molasses to maple syrup be a good substitute?? Or would I loose that lovely rich flavour?
I can’t wait to see you live, apparently you are coming to Gladstone at the end of the year!!!! EEKKK, soo excited!
I’m looking at making these in advance for Christmas. Will they last the three weeks? (Provided we can stop ourselves eating them!)
Yes, just freeze them!
Hi Jo – absolutely loved the gingerbread men. Had a go making them for a friend with a child unable to eat gluten products. He wolfed them down! Must say the mix is painful -very soft but found the trick – use each disk and then with the leftovers put them in the freezer while you use the next disk. Worked a treat. Had a conveyor belt going with my 9yo rolling/squashing and making the gingerbread men. Thank you. Have passed on your recipe and it is well loved. Used Millet and make sorghum flour or equivalent! Used chia seeds instead of xanthum gum. In Oz Bicarb soda instead of ‘baking soda’. thanks again.
Ha ha, I’m glad you worked it out – we always put the batches into the freezer in between cutting (see the video on my FB page). I’m in Australia, sorry, I use baking soda and bicarb soda interchangeably.
I found your gf pfeffernusse cookie recipe but I do not have the tools to grind seeds to a fine grind. Could you give me the ground measurements of the seeds you ground to flour so I can make these for Christmas? Thank you and looking forward to eating these flavourful crunchy treats!
Hi Cindy, the grams are the same for ground or whole seeds/spices/grains! 🙂 Enjoy!