Gluten free gingerbread

I've had a few requests in the last few days for my gluten free gingerbread recipe, so here it is, for your allergy-friendly seasonal baking pleasure! I adapted this recipe via trial & error for g free from one in Stephanie Alexander’s book. The main thing to remember is that gluten free flour crumbles easily and doesn’t adhere together like wheat flour, so you have to accept a certain amount of re-rolling when you get to the cutting stage.

Ingredients (To make about 40 cookies)

170g softened unsalted butter or marg (butter tastes slightly better but marg gives a silkier texture)
180g dark brown sugar
½ cup golden syrup
2 egg yolks
480g plain gluten free flour (I use Organ All-Purpose)
2 teaspoons xanthum gum (sometimes I omit this and it still works but is crumblier in texture)
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon bicarb soda
4 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon ground allspice

Method

Cream butter or marg, sugar and golden syrup in an electric mixer or with hand-held beaters. Beat in the egg yolks. Sift all the dry ingredients together (or just mix them, it doesn’t make a huge amount of diff). Add dry ingredients to the egg / sugar mixture on low speed in the mixer or with electric beaters until it is coming off in wet clumps. With your hands, form the dough into a ball, wrap it in cling wrap and stick it in the fridge for at least an hour (half a day is better).

After chilling, take dough out of the fridge and let it warm up to not-solid, usually about 20-30 minutes on a summer day. Flour a board and roll out your dough, aiming for a thickness of around 5mm. Do not be discouraged if it all crumbles to pieces on the first roll-out – gf dough just needs a little more love, that’s all ;-) Regroup the dough and re-roll until you get a smooth sheet, which might be the first time or the second but is usually, in my experience, the third time.

Cut out your cookie shapes and put them on a cookie tray lined with baking paper. You can decorate them with candy baubles / sprinkles at this stage if desired. Bake in a 170C degree oven for 10-12 min.

Once they are cooled, you can use Royal Icing or those store-bought icing pens to draw edging on them if you want to. (We are in cookie-factory mode here at the moment so we don’t do this step – it’s just too time-consuming with three little kids “helping”!)

Hope it works out for you – it usually does for us!