Chewy Ginger Cookies (Egg-Free)

Sugar-free, gluten-free, egg-free, yet full of brisk ginger flavor, mellow vanilla and tender chewiness. Get yourself warm and in a good mood with these tasty tidbits served with a cup of tea or coffee. Add the finishing touch and make these cookies festive holiday treats by glazing them with Low-Carb Lemon Glaze, a bonus recipe in the end of this post!

 

 

 

Tips for making the Chewy Ginger Cookies

The cookie dough is very easy to make and doesn’t necessarily need any chilling. However, if you live in a hot climate you might want to keep the rest of the dough in the fridge while handling one part. Anyway you can chill the dough for a couple of hours if you like, but according to my experiments it doesn’t necessarily need chilling.

It’s fastest and easiest to mix the ingredients by hand. Just knead the dough until it’s smooth. This shouldn’t take more than a minute. It’s a good idea to start with 3 oz (85 g) cream cheese and add more if the dough feels too crumbly.

When rolling out the dough, it is as well to bear in mind that thicker dough is easier to handle than thinner one. Especially for larger cookies thicker dough is a must, otherwise the cookies might break when transferring them to the baking sheet.

In case you don’t have time or lust for using cookie cutters, you can just roll out the whole dough between two pieces of parchment paper, remove the topmost paper and cut the dough with a knife or pizza cutter into squares. Bake the whole thing, let cool and break into squares.

 

 

Chewy Ginger Cookies (Egg-Free) 2 cups = 480 ml almond flour 3 tablespoons erythritol crystals 1 tablespoon ground organic ginger 40 drops vanilla stevia 3–4 oz = 85–115 g full-fat cream cheese   Directions Preheat the oven to 250 °F or slightly lower (100 °C). In a large bowl, mix the almond flour, erythritol and ginger. Add the vanilla stevia drop by drop, so that the drops are well apart from each other. Add the cream cheese, mix and knead until smooth. Divide the dough in 4–5 pieces. Take one piece at a time for handling. You can keep the rest of the dough in the fridge. Place the piece of dough on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and place another parchment paper on the dough. Roll out the dough until it is approximately 1/5 inch (0.5 cm) thick, remove the topmost parchment paper and cut out cookies using your preferred cookie cutter. Transfer the cookies with a spatula or cheese slicer to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for some 30 minutes, or until golden brown but not too brown. Let cool completely on the parchment paper. Glaze with Low-Carb Lemon Glaze if you like.

 


 

Nutrition information	Protein	Fat	Net carbs	kcal
In total:	52.8 g	146.7 g	25.7 g	1639 kcal
Per cookie if 20 cookies in total:	2.6 g	7.3 g	1.3 g	82 kcal
Per cookie if 40 cookies in total:	1.3 g	3.7 g	0.6 g	41 kcal
Per cookie if 60 cookies in total:	0.9 g	2.4 g	0.4 g	27 kcal

 

 

 

My experiments with the Chewy Ginger Cookies

I spent most of the week meeting my in-laws in Germany, that’s why I didn’t want to sit down and write a lengthy post about my experiments. I wanted to concentrate on fine-tuning my cookie recipe instead. I guess you don’t mind.

There was a great weather in Germany. A bit brisk and still green everywhere. You could smell the fall, especially in the evenings. It’s a fascinating smell, sweet and full of adventures and excitement. Anything can happen in those crepuscular moments between dusk and dawn.

What was happening in my homeland Finland was distant, I didn’t scratch my head over the news about snowstorms, outages and degrees of frost. However, the reality was a slap in the face when we arrived in the snowy and frozen Helsinki. Fortunately the worst snowstorms were over, and the bus took us safely home where the cold bedroom with 55 °F (≈ 13 °C) was waiting for us. Luckily our neighbor — a sweet and kind lady — had pushed away most of the snow from our front yard. I baked her favorite cake in return for her kindness.

But back to this recipe. I had developed this cookie recipe for a while, and now it just needed fine-tuning. In that freezing cold I fine-tuned this recipe wanting to make the flavors as warming and tasty as possible. And simple as well, of course. I reached my goal, a couple of cookies with a cup of hot coffee made my cold day into a lively and vibrant one.

Luckily fine-tuning the recipe didn’t need too much effort before I was completely satisfied. The be-all and end-all was increasing the amount of cream cheese. First I used 3 oz (85 g), which made okay cookies, but they were a bit fragile and I couldn’t cut out proper snowflake cookies about which I was a bit disappointed. I just thought there is nothing I can do for that — except add wheat flour or other no-no stuff.

After increasing the amount of cream cheese to 4 oz (115 g) the cookie dough was easy to handle, nicely smooth and the best of all, I could cut out perfect snowflakes!

Also the amount of erythritol needed a bit adjusting. Too much, and the cookies would taste like marzipan and you could feel the cooling effect of erythritol. Too little, and the cookies wouldn’t be sweet enough and the ginger would be overpowering.

I got an idea to use vanilla stevia in addition to erythritol, and that really made my taste buds singing! Also my toddler savored the raw dough uttering “Yum!” after each and every bite.

 

 

Tips for variation

Instead of ginger, you can naturally use other spices. Below some ideas:

• 1 teaspoon freshly ground organic cardamom. Cardamom — together with vanilla stevia — makes great “bun” cookies. At least I always associate cardamom with buns 🙂 You can make cinnamon bun cookies by adding 2 teaspoons ground organic cinnamon in addition to cardamom
• 1 teaspoon organic orange peel granules and 1 teaspoon ground organic ginger
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon and 2 pinches (2 ml) ground organic allspice.

 

 

 

 

For real festive holiday treats with extra bite of piquancy you can make Low-Carb Lemon Glaze, which I developed especially for these cookies:

 

Low-Carb Lemon Glaze 1/2 cup = 120 ml Confectioner’s Style Swerve OR powdered erythritol 1 tablespoon egg white protein 1–2 tablespoons freshly squeezed organic lemon juice 10 drops liquid stevia   Directions In a small bowl, combine the sweetener, egg white powder, 1 tablespoon lemon juice and the stevia and stir until smooth. Add more lemon juice drop by drop if you prefer thinner consistency. Apply the glaze on completely cooled cookies with a spoon or a tip of a knife. Place the cookies on a plate or cooling rack and let the glaze dry and harden for several hours, preferably overnight. The glazed cookies shouldn’t touch each other. Store the possible leftover glaze in an airtight container in the fridge. Use within a couple of days. Remember: the fresher, the better.