Ingredients

• 1 cup of your favorite *all-natural nut butter (such as peanut, almond or sunflower butter for those w/nut allergies)
• 1 cup coconut sugar (or sucanat)
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp baking soda
• Optional: Fair trade dark chocolate chips (65% cacao or higher)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients. (Our special trick to ensure the ingredients are well combined, is to first whisk the egg, coconut sugar and baking soda together and then use a large rubber spatula to add the nut butter.)
2. Cover the bowl and place the dough in the frig for about 10 minutes so the dough will cool and thicken a bit. (This makes it easier to roll into cookie balls.)
3. Then, pinch off small teaspoon-size pieces and roll into a ball. Add a few chocolate chips to the center of each cookie ball, if desired.
4. Place cookie balls onto a parchment lined baking sheet and bake approximately 8-9 minutes. Allow to cool on the pan for a couple of minutes. Then, carefully transfer cookies to a wire rack to finish cooling.
5. For cookies now and later – Create cookie balls out of all the dough, but only bake one dozen now. Freeze the remaining two dozen uncooked cookie balls in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Then, transfer the cookie dough balls to a freezer-safe container. That way, when you want more cookies at a later date, you can simply remove the desired amount from the freezer, allow the cookies to thaw a bit and then bake as instructed above.

Notes

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups blanched almond flour
• 1 tbsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 3 tbsp butter, melted (if DF, omit butter & increase coconut oil to 1/4 cup)
• 2 tbsp coconut oil, melted
• 2 tbsp organic unsulfured molasses
• 1/3 cup pure maple syrup

Instructions

Making the Dough
1. In a small bowl, combine the almond flour, spices, baking soda and salt.
2. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, blend together the butter, coconut oil, molasses and maple syrup until creamy.
3. Then, slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and beat on low speed until thoroughly blended. Refrigerate dough at least one hour.
Rolling out the dough
4. Once dough is chilled, divide in half. Place one half of the dough on a large sheet of parchment paper on your kitchen counter (be sure to form it into a tightly compressed dough ball) and keep the other half of the dough in the bowl and return to the frig to keep chilled.
5. Place another sheet of parchment paper over the dough ball and pat down a bit with your hand to flatten the dough and then roll it out to 1/4 inch thick.
Cutting shapes in the dough
6. Remove the top sheet of parchment and use a gingerbread man cookie cutter to cut shapes in the dough, but do not try to remove the gingerbread boys from the parchment paper. Instead, slide the parchment onto a baking sheet and place in freezer for a few minutes to allow cookie cut-outs to harden a bit. This will help you to be able to get the gingerbread men off the parchment paper without losing their shape or dismembering them – ouch!
7. While you're waiting for the dough to harden, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Then, take out the other half of the chilled dough from the frig and place it on a large sheet of parchment paper and repeat above steps to roll out and cut shapes in the dough. By the time you do this, the cut-out dough in the freezer will be ready for the final steps listed below.
Decorating and baking gingerbread boys
8. Once the cut-out dough has hardened up a bit, remove it from the freezer and gently separate your gingerbread boys from the dough and place the little guys onto a sheet of clean parchment paper for decorating.
9. Then, decorate the gingerbread boys using your favorite dried fruits and nuts, as shown in photos above.
10. Finally, slide the parchment paper with the decorated gingerbread boys onto a baking sheet and bake in preheated oven for 7-10 minutes (see note below about bake time). Allow to cool for 3-4 minutes on the baking sheet before removing and placing on a wire rack to finish cooling.
Use those dough scraps
11. Place the dough scraps from your cut-outs into a bowl and place back in frig. Then, remove your second sheet of cut-out dough from the freezer and follow above steps for decorating and baking.
12. Finally, form all of the remaining dough scraps into a dough ball and repeat the steps for rolling and cutting the dough as listed above. YUM!

Notes