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!
Oatmeal, tigernut flour, and chia are great foods for getting different types of fiber into our diets. Fiber is what helps build diversity in our gut microbiomes – and there is growing evidence that this is pivotal for preventing food allergy. It’s possible that microbiome therapies may help correct and treat food allergy too, along with many other conditions. But how do you get picky eaters to go there?
Cookies! Here’s an easy recipe to use all three of those foods in one. Tigernut flour is easy to work with and gives baked goods a warm earthy flavor and texture. Combined with oats ground in to flour, it makes an easy texture for a nice twist on the usual oatmeal cookie that anyone can enjoy. Even kids with conditions like Crohn’s disease, food allergy, celiac, or other inflammatory bowel conditions where sweets, eggs, dairy or gluten can wreak havoc will enjoy these cookies.
Everyone needs a cookie now and then! Pack these in your kids’ lunches or enjoy as snacks. No cane sugar, no eggs, lots of fiber and minerals. If your gang can roll with (GF CF no sugar) chocolate chips, chopped nuts, or raisins, add those too. Option to leave oats whole for coarse texture, or grind oats into a fine flour in a food processor for easier digestion in tender or toddler tummies. I have a mini-size food processor in my kitchen to make this task simple and fast. Lastly, see below for why stevia is included – here’s the one I recommend. It is pure organic plant extract, no fillers, in glycerite (not alcohol).
Oatmeal Tigernut Flour Cookies
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Soft, chewy, oat-y cookies that work with all kinds of elimination diets. See amazon links above for hard to find ingredients.
Preheat oven to 350 and grease a baking sheet with coconut oil. Lay a piece of baking parchment on top. Set aside to soak for at least five minutes, or til other ingredients are ready.
Place the chia seeds in a cup or small bowl. Add the water, so that chia seeds are covered. Press any that stick to sides of cup or bowl down into the water with a spoon or spatula, so they can soak. Set aside.
Measure 1/4 gluten free oats and place in a food processor. Process into a fine flour. Use this in your dry ingredient mixture. Make sure it measures 1/4 cup when ground.
In a medium size bowl, mix together dry ingredients: Tigernut flour, oat flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder, and salt. Blend til evenly combined.
In another bowl, combine wet ingredients: Melted coconut oil, vanilla, honey, and stevia drops (why stevia? See note below!). Mix with electric mixer or whisk with a fork or whisk until these are evenly blended. Then add the soaked chia seeds. Stir until all are evenly blended.
Stir wet ingredients into dry, and combine all till evenly mixed. If you are adding chocolate chips, nuts, or raisins, stir these in now.
Place on baking sheet, bake x 15-20 minutes, til slightly browned on bottoms and tops. Enjoy!
Recipe Notes
White chia seeds have a higher amount of omega-3 fatty acids than black chia seeds - which have more protein than the white ones. The omega-3 fatty acids can have a bitter taste, hence the extra help from stevia in this recipe. If you want to go for the slightly bigger protein boost, use black chia seeds instead - they will look like poppy seeds in your final product, which some picky eaters may object to ("what are THOSE? I don't like 'bits'"). They white ones will disappear!
What is congee, and why do I recommend it to my clients? Congee is a great way to ease a delicate gut and evolving biome toward diversity and improved digestion. Long revered as a salve for digestion in Traditional Chinese Medicine (earliest reference dates back to about 1000 BC), congee is a low cost, versatile, delicious food that’s easy to add your weekly recipe staples. I am a huge fan and here is why:
Congee starts with rice – the main ingredient – and is cooked with much more liquid than usual (such as bone broth or chicken stock). It is also simmered much longer, until the texture is like porridge. This makes it very easy to digest.
When the body isn’t preoccupied with digesting complex meals, it can better absorb nutrients.
This can be incredibly healing for children who are coping with reflux, loose stool, gas, and leaky gut – even kids who are moving off of elimination diets due to FPIES, a condition which often strictly avoids rice. Congee however is more digestible, and may work well.
Since the rice grains absorb a high volume of collagen-rich liquid during the cooking process, the porridge is hydrating and nourishing to the lining of the GI tract. Â Â
Congee works as a savory dish or a sweet soother. Use it as a breakfast porridge: Just omit the garlic from the recipe. Stir in raisins, which you can soften as well by microwaving with water for 1 minute before adding to congee.Â
Typicalcongee recipes use long grain rice and animal protein based broths in a slow cooked method, and need hours for the starches in the rice to break down andabsorb the cooking liquid. I recently discovered an Instant Pot recipe which cuts the cooking time down considerably. Try it and share your comments below!
Instant Pot Congee
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You will need an Instant Pot for this version of congee. Bonus - that means it cooks in 20-30 minutes instead of 2-4 hours with traditional stove top simmering (which is also great, just slower). Use organic ingredients, and don't forget to rinse and drain the rice before cooking. For a slow cooked version, cook on stove top by placing 1 cup rice in 2 cups broth. Cook as you would for a usual rice dish, and when liquid is absorbed, simply continue adding more liquid while keeping the pot on a simmering low heat. Add about a half cup at a time, stir, simmer til absorbed and add more. Repeat for 2-3 hours until the rice is a broken porridge.
You will need an Instant Pot for this version of congee. Bonus - that means it cooks in 20-30 minutes instead of 2-4 hours with traditional stove top simmering (which is also great, just slower). Use organic ingredients, and don't forget to rinse and drain the rice before cooking. For a slow cooked version, cook on stove top by placing 1 cup rice in 2 cups broth. Cook as you would for a usual rice dish, and when liquid is absorbed, simply continue adding more liquid while keeping the pot on a simmering low heat. Add about a half cup at a time, stir, simmer til absorbed and add more. Repeat for 2-3 hours until the rice is a broken porridge.
Combine all ingredients in the Instant Pot, except honey or maple syrup. Add that to taste after cooking, if you are making a breakfast congee.
Close and lock the lid. S
Set the pressure cook / manual setting on high for 30 minutes.
When ready to serve, add in any extras you like: For savory congee, try minced scallions, minced cilantro, or minced pork or chicken. For breakfast congee, try raisins (cooked with the congee or added after), berries, bananas, maple syrup, or honey.
Recipe Notes
For traditional stovetop cooking, place all ingredients with rinsed rice in a large pot on stove. Cover rice with broth and bring to boil. Reduce heat to steady simmer and add liquid throughout the next two hours, whenever the liquid cooks down to expose the rice. Stir to keep from sticking to bottom of pot.
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.
These pumpkin chia pudding cups are unbelievably easy and yummy. This started out as a standard baked custard, but it actually works better to skip that step completely and just pop them in the fridge to firm up!
FPIES, Crohns flares, food allergies, and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) can be challenging and frightening for anyone, let alone kids. It’s so discouraging when it seems there is nothing to eat, and food only hurts. Here is a soothing, nourishing recipe that uses safe, easily digested ingredients that are low FODMAPs and allowed on SCD as well as IBD and AIP restricted diets. It’s free of grains, gluten, egg, dairy, nuts, and sugar. Plus it’s yummy! Use only plain unsweetened organic ingredients, with no fillers, additives, or sugars added to the canned goods.
Pumpkin Chia Pudding Cups
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Perfect pumpkin chia pudding, sweet and simple. For an extra treat, top with coconut whipped cream: Refrigerate a can of coconut milk overnight. Drain off liquid, and whip the solid fat into a topping. Add a couple drops of stevia or honey for extra sweet.
Perfect pumpkin chia pudding, sweet and simple. For an extra treat, top with coconut whipped cream: Refrigerate a can of coconut milk overnight. Drain off liquid, and whip the solid fat into a topping. Add a couple drops of stevia or honey for extra sweet.
In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients, saving chia seeds for last. Stir thoroughly, til smooth and evenly mixed. You might find this works best in a food processor, blender, or mixing bowl with electric mixer.
Chill for an hour or more, until set. You can pour entire mixture into one large bowl, or into six individual cups.
Enjoy plain or with a blob of freshly whipped coconut creme.
