It’s Christmas baking season! Time to bring out all the sweet holiday treats. One of our favorite Christmas recipes is gluten-free sourdough molasses cookies. When learning to live and bake with dietary restrictions, the holidays can be a tricky time to navigate. All the nostalgia for goodies of Christmas past, but knowing you’d regret eating them today. Thankfully you don’t have to miss out on these tasty molasses cookies any longer! Let me show you my trick for converting this classic Christmas cookie recipe to gluten-free.
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Magic Gluten-Free Conversion
One of the easiest swaps that I’m sure you’ve already read about is cup-for-cup or measure-for-measure flour. And like the name implies, you can substitute it in for all-purpose flour in just about any recipe to convert the recipe to gluten-free. There’s just one problem…it’s so very bland! Enter buckwheat. Despite its name, it does not contain any wheat or gluten. Similar to quinoa and amaranth, it is a pseudocereal with grain-like seeds that can be ground into a flour.
Buckwheat groats come in two forms–hulled and unhulled. If you have had buckwheat pancakes before, then you are likely familiar with unhulled buckwheat. It’s a gray color (due to the black hulls), has a nutty flavor, and a slightly gritty texture. This flour is commonly found at grocery stores pre-ground, and will work in converting some recipes if you are unable to source hulled buckwheat groats. However, the best flour for stealthily converting your favorite recipes to gluten-free is hulled buckwheat flour.
Learn more about how to bake gluten-free with buckwheat here.
50:50 is the magic ratio of cup-for-cup flour to hulled buckwheat flour in all your baked good recipes! If your recipe calls for 1 cup of all-purpose flour? Replace it with ½ cup hulled buckwheat flour and ½ cup cup-4-cup flour. Then make the rest of the recipe like you always have. Easy peasy! Gluten-free and no one will even notice!
Where to Buy Gluten-Free Baking Supplies?
Our favorite place for all things gluten-free is Azure Standard. They have a great selection of all the different types of gluten-free flours along with a great selection of certified gluten-free products if you are celiac and need to 100% avoid gluten. Azure Standard is similar to an online natural foods co-op shop where you can save money by buying in bulk and using the power of ordering with community to keep the costs down. And no annual membership fee like certain big box bulk retailers!
It’s simple to get started with Azure Standard. Simply set up an account, find a pickup (aka “drop”) location near you and fill up your cart with your order. Our favorite brands of Azure Standard ingredients for this recipe are linked below in the recipe for your convenience!
Gluten-Free Sourdough?
Wait, what about the sourdough part? Turns out you can have a 100% gluten-free sourdough starter! I purchased my original gluten-free starter culture on Azure Standard and it can be fed any starchy gluten-free flour as you would a normal sourdough starter. I typically just use cup-4-cup flour, but rice flour would work too. While I have never succeeded at making a gluten-free artisan loaf with it, gluten-free sourdough starter does add a ton of flavor to biscuits, waffles, cookies, and other baked goods.
Credit to the original
The original sourdough molasses cookie recipe converted here comes from Homemade Food Junkie. What follows below is how to make their mouthwatering recipe gluten-free.
Gluten-Free Sourdough Molasses Cookies
Ingredients
- ½ cup gluten-free sourdough starter
- 1 cup brown sugar
- ¼ cup softened butter
- ¼ cup molasses
- 1 egg
- 1 cup measure4measure or cup4cup gluten-free flour blend
- 1 cup hulled buckwheat flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp ginger
- ¼ tsp ground cloves
- ¼ tsp salt
- 3 tbsp sugar for rolling cookies
Directions
- Preheat oven to 325F
- In a medium bowl mix together the dry ingredients and set aside.
- In a large bowl, beat the starter, brown sugar, molasses, butter and egg.
- Mix in the dry ingredients gradually
- Shape the dough into approximately 1-inch balls.
- Press the tops into the white sugar
- Place on an ungreased cookie sheet about 2 inches apart
- Bake for 13-16 minutes until set.
- Remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack.
Hope you enjoy these delicious gluten-free sourdough molasses cookies this holiday season!