Do you love chocolate and mint? These Frosted Gluten-free Chocolate Mint Cookies are loaded with healthy teff flour, and are doubly chocolatey minty--topped with a rich chocolatey frosting on a chocolate mint cookie, they're doubly good!
There is something so classically beautiful about holiday baking. Almost every year growing up we would spend hours making sweets to give out to friends.
I remember getting covered in chocolate, covering the table with powdered sugar, peanut butter stickiness, and one or two too many sweets being eaten.
I look forward to handing down this tradition to my children. This year, with the oldests being four and two, seems the time to begin traditions. But, we have many food allergies in our family.
Gluten, dairy, corn, and soy have been confirmed and we are currently nut and egg free.
All of those candies I made growing up? They are out of the question. As are most traditional Christmas goodies.
Knowing I would want to do lots of Christmas baking, I began in October to try and figure out some really great Christmas recipes. I already have a Gingerbread Marshmallows recipe which I plan on using, but wanted some baked goods.
I have three requirements for what I consider a good baked good recipe.
Three Things for a "Good Baked Good"
- It tastes GOOD not just “good for” being (put here whatever food you are avoiding) free (i.e. "fat" or "gluten"-free)
- Doesn't have to use a ton of different kinds of flours
- It's made from whole natural ingredients. Like whole grains, no starches if possible, unrefined sugar, healthy oils, and no xanthan or guar gum.
And, then then of course that it is gluten, dairy, egg, nut, corn, and soy free so that we (with all of our special diets) can have it.
I have, so far, come up with two Christmas cookie recipes I really like. Chewy Gingerbread Cookies and these Chocolate Mint Cookies.
Does it get much more Christmas-y then Chocolate Mint Cookies? I actually made these to be similar to the king of Christmas cookies (or rather the queen I guess) with a chocolate coating that will rival girl scout's thin mints.
More On these Gluten-free Chocolate Mint Cookies
The warmth of chocolate with the fresh breeze of mint is fairly irresistible. But, feel free to eat up.
While I would never venture to call these a healthy super food they are ridiculously healthier then most cookies. They are whole grain. The flour used, Teff, is rich in protein, calcium, and iron.
The sugar options-- sucanat or coconut sugar-- while still sugar have trace minerals and are far less refined then most sweeteners. But, don't worry. They don' t taste in the least "healthy". They are fudgy in texture and taste like thin mints.
Recipe Notes
- Essential Oils: See Adrienne’s choice for essential oils here.
- Chocolate Chips: These Homemade Chocolate or Carob Chips can be used instead of baking chocolate if you like.
- Sweeteners: You can sub a low-glycemic sweetener for the sucanat. A good option would be using xylitol for 1/2 the amount with stevia making up the other half (16 scoops for the cookies and 8 scoops for the topping) - see How to Use Stevia.
More Yummy Gluten-free Treats
Here are some more delicious cookie recipes that you might want to try out.
Soft Pumpkin Cookies
Homemade Chocolate Chips
Pumpkin Snickerdoodles
Chocolate Chip "Cheesecake"-Filled Chocolate Cupcakes
30 Healthy Christmas Cookie Recipes
Frosted Chocolate Mint Cookies - Gluten, Dairy, and Egg Free
Ingredients
Cookies
- 2 Tbsp flax (finely ground)
- 6 Tbsp water (warm)
- 1 cup teff flour
- 1 cup sucanat (or sub in a low-carb sweetener as needed)
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 cup cocoa
- 6 Tbsp coconut oil (or olive oil)
- 1/4 tsp peppermint oil
Optional Chocolate Coating
- 8 oz baking chocolate (chopped)
- 1/4 tsp peppermint oil
- 1 pinch salt
- 1/4 cup water
- 1/2 cup sucanat
Instructions
- Mix the water and the ground flax together. Let sit for at least 15 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two sheet pans with parchment paper, if using metal pans.
- Mix together the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the olive or coconut oil, the vanilla, and the peppermint oil. Stir in the flax mixture.
- Roll tablespoons-full of batter and place evenly on the two sheet pans. Press down to flatten.
- Bake for 18-20 minutes until the edges are set and the centers are fairly set. Let the cookies cool on the pans if you are using stone pans. If you are using metal let them cool for a few minutes then lift the parchment paper off and set on a cooling rack.
- If making the chocolate coating, in a small pot mix together the chopped chocolate, mint oil, salt, water, and sucanat.
- Put the pan over medium heat. Cook and whisk until smooth.
- Spread the mixture, while hot, on cooled cookies. If it is difficult to spread due to being thin, you can wait a little bit, but it sets up quickly and then is difficult to spread thinly.
I am now officially hungry. I guess that is what I get for writing about cookies late at night.
I hope you enjoy these as much as we do!
What's YOUR favorite kind of cookie?
Debra Worth is first and foremost a daughter of the king of kings. She lives in mid-Missouri with her husband of 5 years and 3 young children. Debra has a passion for cooking healthy foods blogs about all things mom, with a special emphasis on natural living, at her blog, Worth Cooking. You can also follow her on Facebook and Instagram.
Silly me! I did not realize you were writing on Whole New Moms too! Blushing big time..
Funny - no problem :)!
Hello. I'm looking forward to trying your recipe, which looks absolutely marvelous, and I have a question about the peppermint oil you used.
Although you specify peppermint oil, you've provided a link to Whole New Mom's essential oil page (I love her site, btw, and go there often), which confused me a bit. I apologize, but I do need clarification.
Normally, I I would expect to use about a 1/4 teaspoon peppermint oil for a recipe of this size, just as you specify. That would be the peppermint oil I buy in the spice section of my store. But if I were using an essential oil, I would use just a drop, if that, since they are so potent. In this recipe, do you use spice-rack peppermint oil or an essential oil?.
Hi there. Thanks for reading. I'm not quite understanding - the cookie recipe is on my site and then we linked to the oils as well. Can you clarify what the confusion is please? Debra (the author) used essential oils in the cookies so they're super minty :).
I couldn't find sucanat anywhere. I used cane sugar instead. Everything else was exact, but my mixture was too dry. I added an extra tablespoon of coconut oil and tried that but it still was too crumbly. So I added a tablespoon of rice syrup, tried again and still too crumbly. I almost gave up, but decided to use an egg. That did it. They took 12 minutes to bake, and turned out pretty great, but where did I go wrong, I wonder?
These look delicious! How much vanilla do you add to the cookies?
I decided I liked it better without vanilla as I felt it competed with the mint more then complimented, but you could add a teaspoon . It is yummy either way.
Can you substitute the teff flour for another kind of flour? I was hoping to use spelt or kamut. Would that work? And if so, could guess on the ratios? I've never heard of Teff flour before.
If you had a scale it should be 240 grams of either of those flours. If not, it would be pretty close, you might need another tablespoon but I say go for it!
is there a different type of flour that would work just as well as the teff?
Teff is the only one I have experience with, but you could try other ones.
These look wonderful , sharing today on my FB page!