Great news, everyone! Curly really loves gingerbread…

…little punk.

Except who can blame her?! I make seriously good gingerbread cookies.

I recognize that people typically think of gingerbread in terms of the little gingerbread man and a Christmas cookie. Or as a Shrek character. (Not the gumdrop buttons!!!)

Gingerbread for me, however, has long been a Thanksgiving staple thanks to my Grandma Rita’s famous turkey cookies. More good news, though– once upon a time, my Grandma Rita gave me her cookie cutter and since then, I’ve made my own gingerbread turkeys every year!!

Gingerbread is delicious, of course, and already kind of win because the Betty Crocker Cookbook recipe is dairy-free (shortening– better living through chemistry!) and the spices are just the most perfect combination of holidays ever imaginable– cinnamon and ginger and cloves and allspice. MMMM! They’re just so good!

So I made some this year:

And people were impressed, but I was so so so sad because they smelled so very, very delicious, but I knew I shouldn’t eat them… all gluten full and all. (Note: I did eat one– the one that Curly licked. We share lots of germs, Curly and me… but no more! We packed them up real fast after her little tongue found its way up on the table.) So I was desperate to find a gluten free dairy free recipe for gingerbread cut out cookies. And on Thanksgiving Eve I had great, great, great success!!

A Thanksgiving miracle…

I haven’t actually shared any recipes in this venue in the past, but I thought maybe this one was worthy of it. Maybe it should be a separate section of the old blog if it ends up being something more frequent, but we’ll see…

So! Real quick! I present to you:

Gluten-free, Dairy-free Gingerbread Cookies

3 1/2 cups Pamela’s Gluten Free Flour Blend (omg, this stuff is a-freaking-mazing)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup molasses
12 Tbsp shortening (oh Crisco, how I love you and your dairy-free-ness) + 2 Tbsp water
2 Tbsp dairy-free milk substitute (I used almond)
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cream together brown sugar, shortening, and water. Add non-milk milk and molasses and mix until well-blended. Add soda, salt, and spices. Add flour and mix until lovely, soft, pliable dough forms. It’ll be like that– real nice.

Roll out dough on floured surface with floured rolling pin, just like any other cut out cookies, even the gluten full kind. Cut out cookies and place on parchment paper-lined baking sheet.

Bake 10 – 12 minutes (10 was perfect, perfect, perfect).

Look how nice they turned out! Oy! And so delicious!!

So, to give credit where credit’s due… this recipe is essentially a mash-up of my original favorite from Betty Crocker’s Cookbook (which I highly recommend using if gluten does not present an issue for you) and Pamela’s Gingerbread Cookies (which would probably be fine as written except who wants to go out and buy Pamela’s Bread Mix just to make cookies when flour is already in da hiz-ouse… plus, gingerbread with no allspice? puh-leez!).

For the fancy turkey frosting, I just used the stuff that comes in a can and goes on sale this time of year. Mini chocolate chip eye balls on the regular cookies, left off on the others since chocolate chips aren’t dairy-free. Those bitty little red hots are super delicious on them too. I hope you bake them… I hope you love them!!

Most importantly, I hope you had a lovely turkey day and that someday we can spend it together munching on deliciously spiced gingerbread turkey cookies!

PS: Brown paper grocery bags with the bottoms cut off and opened up on the table make the best ever liners for fresh out of the oven cookies. My mom’s been doing it forever and ever and it’s basically genius! Try it next time!