Vegan Crystallized Ginger Cookies - A Wonderful Low Calorie Christmas Cookie

Whole Foods 365 offers vegan sugar and chocolate chips.

Beat ingredients with an electric hand beater for best results.

Drop batter onto cookie sheet, shape and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake 9 to 10 minutes until fluffy, firm and cracked.

Baking Cookies - A Holiday Tradition

Thanksgiving is all about the big meal but Christmas is all about the cookies! One of my favorites are ginger cookies, especially when they have little chunks of crystallized ginger in them.

This recipe is quite a bit healthier than most because they are made with less sugar and fat.

Can a Cookie be Healthy?

All cookies should be eaten in moderation but this cookie actually has some health benefits.

This recipe uses a combination of whole grain flours: white whole wheat and oat flour. Ginger cookies are also made with black strap molasses which is a very good source of iron, calcium, (both of which are critical in the vegan diet), copper, manganese, potassium and magnesium. Ginger has many benefits such as reducing nausea and soothing upset stomachs and is also known to reduce inflammation. Ginger is also used for clearing up congestion due to colds.

Applesauce replaces some of the fat and stevia replaces half of the sugar typically used in ginger cookie recipes so the calorie count for each cookie is only 62 calories! So as far as cookies go, these are pretty guilt-free!

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Vegan Crystallized Ginger Cookies

[makes 3 dozen]

1 cup white whole wheat flour

1 cup oat flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

8 packets stevia

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

2 tablespoons unsweetened applesauce

1/2 cup organic brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/3 cup Earth Balance or other vegan buttery spread

1/4 cup unsweetened soy milk

1 1/2 teaspoons EnerG egg replacer in 2 tablespoons warm water, mixed thoroughly *

1/4 cup blackstrap molasses

1/3 cup crystallized ginger, finely chopped

1 tablespoon organic cane sugar for sprinkling

* equivalent of one egg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease a cookie sheet.

In a medium bowl, mix together wheat and oat flours, baking soda, stevia, salt, ginger, cinnamon and cloves and set aside.

In a large bowl, place applesauce, brown sugar, vanilla, Earth Balance, soy milk, egg replacer mixture and blackstrap molasses. Beat together well with an electric hand beater, scraping down the sides of the bowl when necessary. If you don't have a hand beater, beat with a whisk.

Add the dry ingredients and beat again until combined.

Add the crystallized ginger and beat again until the ginger pieces are mixed in uniformly (they tend to clump together).

Drop teaspoons of batter onto a greased cookie sheet. Once the batter is on the sheet, you can flatten it and form it with your fingers. I baked one dozen cookies per sheet (they spread out when baking) and made 3 batches. Once you've formed the batter into flat, round cookies, sprinkle 1 teaspoon of organic cane sugar over each dozen cookies.

Bake for 9 to 10 minutes.

Remove from oven, let sit for about a minute and carefully remove cookies with a thin spatula onto a cooling rack. Cool and eat or eat them warm. They will keep for days.

Per cookie: 62 calories, 1.9 g fat, 0.6 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 0.8 g protein, 9.2 g carbohydrate and 0.6 g dietary fiber.