Cookies like Ginger Snaps or Snickerdoodles are a holiday tradition! This version lets anyone enjoy and participate with replacements for gluten, dairy products, and processed sugar. Choose soft and chewy with a shorter bake time, or make these more like a crisp ginger snap with a longer bake time.
I chose a flour blend in this case for a young client who was moving out of a food sensitivity for almond. We were slowly reintroducing almond sources while restoring gut biome and health. The blend of grain free flours with some almond flour helped make it a success, and the texture was perfect! You can also make this recipe using only almond flour for the full amount as shown here, if you want strict SCD, GAPS or Paleo compliance. And if almond butter doesn’t work, try sunflower butter or any other safe nut or seed butter. Sunflower butter is quite bitter when unsweetened, so consider adding a dash of stevia (either in glycerite drops or powder) if you would like to improve the flavor without affecting texture.
A perfectly spiced holiday cookie that works for most any elimination diet or food sensitivity. For SCD, GAPS or Paleo compliance, use only almond flour for the full 1 and 1/4 cups. Option to add colorful sprinkles to cookies just prior to bake, or stir in chocolate chips or chopped nuts too!
A perfectly spiced holiday cookie that works for most any elimination diet or food sensitivity. For SCD, GAPS or Paleo compliance, use only almond flour for the full 1 and 1/4 cups. Option to add colorful sprinkles to cookies just prior to bake, or stir in chocolate chips or chopped nuts too!
Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease two medium or one large baking sheets, line with parchment paper, and set aside.
Combine flours, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a medium sized mixing bowl.
In a smaller bowl, use a sturdy wooden spoon to stir almond butter, honey, and vanilla extract. It will be stiff. Add almond milk as needed to make this whip smoothly into an even, thick liquid texture.
Mix wet ingredients into the dry and stir thoroughly to evenly combine. The dough will be very sticky.
Grease your palms with a small amount of coconut oil. Scoop spoonfuls of batter into your palms to make ~1" size balls. Place these about 2" apart on the cookie sheet. The coconut oil on your palms makes this task go more smoothly and gives the cookies a nice texture, add more to your palms as needed.
Bake time varies. For a soft chewy cookie, try an 8-10 minute bake time. For a crisp snap cookie, bake 12-15 minutes. Either way, bake until cookies begin to firm up on the outside.
Allow to cool for a few minutes on baking sheet before moving to a wire rack or serving plate. Enjoy!
Recipe Notes
For SCD, GAPS or Paleo compliance, use only almond flour for the full 1 and 1/4 cups. Option to add colorful sprinkles to cookies just prior to bake, or stir in chocolate chips or chopped nuts too!
Tigernut flour is something I had heard of often, but never used, until I needed an option without almond flour, gluten, any grain flours, or nut flours. I also had to omit eggs in this case, which are substituted here with “chia eggs” – and it worked! This is a dense, moist bread, almost crumb cake like. If your kids are missing muffins on an elimination diet, give this a try in small muffin tins. I’ve baked it here as a sweet bread.
This tigernut flour recipe is easy on the gut – it’s compatible with auto-immune Paleo (AIP) and modified Specific Carbohydrate Diets (some SCD users can comfortably enjoy this flour).It’s low FODMAPS too – which means it may work for toddlers emerging from FPIES restricted diets. Of course, always check with your care team before going forward.
Tigernut flour is not from nuts at all, but from a root vegetable which is roasted then ground into a fine powder. Tigernuts were a food source for humans thousands of years ago! The flour yields a nutty earthy taste and texture. It’s a great source of gut-helping prebiotic fiber as well as minerals like iron, zinc, potassium, and magnesium – plus some protein too.
This flour can be a little hard to find, but it can be had on line. In my region in Boulder, Colorado, I found it at my favorite Natural Grocers. It’s also always available on amazon and Organic Gemini Tiger Nut Flour is the brand I have tested in this recipe. If it just isn’t available, the recipe works well by using 2/3 cup potato starch flour, 1/3 cup tapioca flour, and 1/3 cup coconut flour instead (omit the oat flour).
Tigernut Blueberry Peach Breakfast Bread
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A moist, sweet, dense treat for breakfast or snacking. Bake in a bread pan or in small paper lined muffin tins.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a bread loaf baking pan with coconut oil. Line with parchment paper.
Combine chia seed with water in a small bowl and set aside. Allow chia seeds to gel for at least five minutes while you prepare other ingredients.
Combine the dry ingredients in a medium bowl, mix to blend evenly.
In another bowl, whisk together the melted coconut oil, vanilla, almond milk, and honey. Then stir in the chopped peaches and softened blueberries, followed by the soaked chia seeds. Make sure fruit is room temperature or warm, otherwise it will cause melted coconut oil to harden and it won't blend well.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry, and mix til evenly combined.
Scoop batter into prepared baking pan. It will be sticky. Press to smooth to an even surface in the pan. Dust cinnamon lightly on top. Option to drizzle thin strand of pure maple syrup on top also, and spread into thin layer.
Bake x 30 minutes for bread, and 20 minutes for muffins. Top and edges should be browned and toothpick will come out clean except for fruit. Bread will have hollow sound when tapped and top will be firm.
Recipe Notes
For peaches, you can use canned as long as organic and thoroughly rinsed of all packing juices. You can use frozen thawed fruit as well if preferred.
Substitutions: If avoiding all grains and you would like to omit oatmeal, option to substitute oat flour with 1/4 potato starch flour and 1/4 cup tapioca flour; or, sub oat flour with 1/3 coconut flour instead for SCD compliance.
Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) leans hard on eggs. Eggs are great, but not everyone can eat them, let alone every day in quantity for breakfast. Here’s an option that minimizes the daily eggs-for-breakfast habit while giving some helpful SCD-legal carbohydrates too. Plus, who doesn’t love pancakes? Enjoy plain or drop in fruits as your child’s progression in the SCD stages allows. Or, top with soft cooked diced apples! If egg is an issue, double the applesauce and omit the egg entirely. Pancakes will be more dense but still work.
SCD Apple Pancakes
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These SCD legal pancakes are delicate, mildly sweet and savory all at the same time. Enjoy plain or drop in fruits as your child's progression in the SCD stages allows.
These SCD legal pancakes are delicate, mildly sweet and savory all at the same time. Enjoy plain or drop in fruits as your child's progression in the SCD stages allows.
Mix the wet ingredients (first five ingredients - applesauce, honey, vanilla, coconut milk, and egg) evenly in a bowl.
Mix dry ingredients evenly in a separate bowl (the flours, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon).
Combine the wet and dry ingredients by adding the dry to the wet. Stir to mix evenly.
Melt ghee or coconut oil in skillet and heat on medium heat. Drop generous spoonfuls of batter onto skillet once the fat is hot/melted. Skillet should be hot enough so batter quickly sets, but doesn't burn. After a few moments, slide a spatula under the pancakes to make sure they aren't sticking. If they are, add a bit more ghee or coconut oil and let it flow under and around pancakes.
If you like, this is when to add fruit: Drop blueberries, raspberries, or thin banana slices into the pancake as it starts cooking.
Cook til bubbles just appear in the pancakes. Flip the pancakes to cook other side. Cook for about a minute or two, then remove from skillet. If there is enough fat/oil in skillet, they will cook without sticking. Add more if need be, and lift edges of pancakes with skillet to allow fat/oil to flow under them so they won't stick.
SCD eaters have a hard time finding carbs that are comfortable and safe to eat – especially the ones I know, who are little – but this SCD legal Apple Banana Cake is a problem solver!
The problem with SCD for kids is that it can stunt growth. Those are fightin’ words I know! But, when children eat a high protein, high fat, low carb diet (as was true for the infamous Atkins diet of the ’80s), they will not only not gain weight very well, they may not grow well either – even when they eat ample daily total calories.
Why is this? Because little humans need carbohydrates for growth. Carbs protect protein for other tasks during growth. They also help build a healthy gut biome, when the right carbs are eaten. When kids go keto, they are using protein and ketones for energy. Protein is a lousy fuel source. Relying on it day after day will overburden kidney. Ketones (as you probably know) are a great fuel source. While this works great for adults and anyone who does not need to lose weight, it doesn’t work so well for children who need to gain weight and correct a growth pattern that has flattened. Ketones can also suppress appetite, making it even harder to eat the amounts of food children need to repair growth patterns
Once you get past Intro, Stage 1 and Stage 2 of SCD, try this recipe. I took extra care to cook apples before baking them in to the cake (a tool like this, if you don’t already have one, makes the core/cut/peel part of the task fast and easy). If you’re further along in the Stages of SCD, you may be fine putting cut raw apples into the bake. If you don’t have time to cook the apples, use SCD legal applesauce (2 cups).
I also took extra caution with the orange juice, and fresh-squeezed my own for the recipe (with one of these – makes this job a snap too, and many versions abound. I’ve had mine for over 30 years and it’s still going strong). Or, you can use any store bought SCD legal OJ instead (Whole Foods 365 fresh squeezed for example) to save time.
The third thing I was careful to do was grind the pumpkin seeds into meal before adding to the recipe. Again, SCDers who are stable, past early phases, and not trying to resolve active symptoms may be able to skip that step and just place the seeds in the batter.
Ok enough tips – bake and enjoy. This is moist and yummy, almost like a kugel, minus the grains and sugar!
SCD Apple Banana Cake
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Moist, rich, delicious...like a kugel or bread pudding - but Paleo and SCD legal!
Grease a 9 inch square baking pan with coconut oil or ghee, and line with parchment baking paper. Preheat oven to 350.
Place pumpkin seeds in a food processor. Grind to fine meal. Add this to a medium size bowl and combine with dry ingredients: Almond flour, cinnamon, baking soda, raw maca powder.
In a separate bowl or in a stand mixer bowl, combine eggs, honey, vanilla. Beat til smooth and evenly mixed.
Mash banana to gloppy liquid in another bowl. Add the cooked apples (or applesauce) to the banana mash, and stir both to mix together evenly.
Add the banana/apple mixture to the wet ingredients, and stir to evenly combine everything.
Add the dry ingredients into the wet mixture, stir til evenly mixed. Batter will be thick and wet. Spoon into baking pan. Bake for one hour, til top is browned and cake has begun pulling from edges of pan. Enjoy!
No reason to miss out on healthy carb treats for your kids. Treats don’t have to be sugary junk. This is a moist and festive quick bread, great for packing into lunches or after school snack. Remember, kids need carbs to grow and gain as much as they need protein and fats. Turn this satisfying and nourishing treat up a notch to extra special mode (and add a protein boost too), when you bake as muffins and spread with my Paleo Honey Butter Cream Frosting.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan (or muffin tins) and dust with your flour of choice. Lining the loaf pan with baking parchment, if available, or your muffin tins with paper cups, makes for easier removal after baking but isn't crucial.
Blend flour mix, baking soda, xanthan gum, cinnamon, stevia, and spices, baking powder and set aside.
In a mixer, cream butter until pale or nearly white.
Add the sugar and beat until fluffy, then add eggs one at a time and blend evenly. If the mixture looks cracked, add 1 or 2 Tablespoons of your dry ingredient blend to the bowl, and stir til smooth.
Stir in pumpkin puree, then add dry ingredients and alternate with milk substitute until all are blended together smoothly.
Stir in your choice of chopped nuts, chocolate chips or raisins. Bake the loaf for 1 hour. Small loaves may be done in 25 minutes, or muffins in 15-10 minutes.
Recipe Notes
For muffins, grease a muffin or cupcake tin and dust with your choice of GF or Paleo flour. Reduce baking time to 18-25 minutes, longer for larger muffins and less for smaller ones. Test for doneness with toothpick, which should come out clean. Cool on baking rack and frost with Paleo Honey Buttercream Frosting. If nuts of any type can't be added to the batter, try Lily's GF CF stevia sweetened chocolate chips, raisins, or Enjoy Life GF CF chocolate chips.
No reason to miss out on healthy carb treats for your kids. Treats don’t have to be sugary junk. This is a moist and festive quick bread, great for packing into lunches or after school snack. Remember, kids need carbs to grow and gain as much as they need protein and fats. Turn this satisfying and nourishing treat up a notch to extra special mode (and add a protein boost too), when you bake as muffins and spread with my 