These Keto Ginger Molasses Cookies are a dream come true for cookie lovers. Thick, chewy, and with the perfect balance of sweet and spice, they always hit the spot. And they have only 2.3g net carbs per serving!
If you love gingery sweets, then these Keto Ginger Cookies are going to blow your mind. They blew my mind when I created them, and clearly others felt the same way. They continue to be a fan favorite, year after year.
They are everything you want in a ginger cookie. Soft and chewy, with a nice gingery kick and a hint of molasses. And when I say a hint, I really mean just a hint.
I put these on my platter of Keto Christmas Cookies every year and they are often the first to disappear!
Why you will love this recipe
This recipe was the first in which I added gelatin for a chewier consistency. And I was surprised and impressed at the difference it made. I use the same trick in other recipes, like keto brownies.
Keep in mind that these are not meant to be crisp like Keto Gingerbread Cookies. Gelatin works best in recipes that have a soft texture. It helps mimic the characteristics of a classic ginger molasses cookie.
One thing I love about this cookie recipe is how easy it is to make. I can whip up a big batch that serves 20 people in less than 40 minutes. They also store really well so you can make them ahead and freeze until needed.
Reader Testimonials
“Yay!! Ginger snaps/molasses cookies are my absolute favorite and I miss them being on Keto. These are amazing and hit all the notes perfectly!!” — SandyB
“I made a batch of these today for ROAD TRIP SNACKS. I’ve gotta say these are the BEST low carb/keto cookies I have EVER made, and I’ve made many. These are the closest to REAL cookies in taste and texture and I really, really thank you!” — Andrea
“I’m surprised as heck, but these cookies work! I’m so used to almond flour producing a product that crumbles very easily and these have a real chewiness.: — Becky
Ingredients you need
- Almond flour: As always, finely ground almond flour will make the best cookies, without a grainy texture.
- Grassfed gelatin: The addition of gelatin is key to a chewy consistency, so I don’t recommend skipping it. You can use Knox gelatin, and about 2 envelopes is sufficient for this recipe. You can also try replacing the gelatin with 1/2 cup of collagen peptides.
- Spices: Ginger cookies always include ground ginger, ground cinnamon, and either nutmeg or cloves. You can increase the ginger as much as you like. Some people like to double it in this recipe!
- Almond butter: I use almond butter in this recipe to increase the moisture and create a good thick cookie dough. You can use other nut butters, but peanut butter has a strong flavor and may overpower the spices.
- Swerve Brown: A brown sugar replacement adds more flavor to the cookies than granular white sweetener. I recommend Swerve Brown.
- Molasses: I add 2 teaspoons of real molasses to my cookies, for added color and flavor. You can omit this if you feel strongly about it, but it only adds about 0.5g of carbs per serving.
- Pantry staples: Eggs, butter, baking soda, vanilla extract.
Step by Step Directions
1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the almond flour, gelatin, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, and cloves.
2. In a large bowl, beat the butter, almond butter and sweetener until smooth. Beat in the eggs, molasses, and vanilla extract until well combined. Add the almond flour mixture and continue to beat until the dough comes together.
3. Roll the dough into 1 inch balls and place a few inches apart on the prepared baking sheet.
4. Bake 5 minutes, then remove from the oven and gently press down a bit (to encourage them to spread). Return to the oven and bake another 7 minutes or so, until just barely golden brown. They will still be very soft. Remove and let cool completely on the pan.
Expert tips
Don’t press the cookies down from the start, when the dough is completely raw. This tends to make the edges crack. Allow the cookies to bake for 5 minutes first, to warm up the dough. Pressing down at this point helps them spread properly without making irregular, cracked edges.
Sweetener options: For best results, I recommend erythritol-based sweeteners. BochaSweet and allulose tend to make cookies more puffy and soft, rather than chewy. Allulose also browns very quickly during baking, which may make the cookies too dark.
Gelatin substitutes: You can omit the gelatin altogether, although the cookies will be less chewy. You can also add some collagen peptides, but you will need about half a cup to get the same chewiness. I am not sure that any vegetarian substitutes, like agar agar, will have the same effect. But you’re certainly welcome to experiment!
Frequently Asked Questions
These keto ginger cookies have 4.2g of carbs and 1.9g of fiber. That comes to 2.3g net carbs per serving of 2 cookies. And yes, that includes the molasses!
Adding gelatin goes along way to making keto cookies chewier. It is hygroscopic, meaning that it attracts and holds onto moisture during baking. This characteristic helps offset the lack of gluten and sugar in keto baked goods so that they don’t dry out as much.
Store the cookies in a covered container on the counter for up to 5 days, or in the fridge for up to 10 days. You can also freeze the cookies for up to 2 months. The raw dough freezes nicely as well. Thaw completely before rolling into balls and baking as directed.
More ginger recipes you will enjoy
- Keto Gingerbread Pound Cake
- Easy Gingerbread Waffles
- Sugar Free Gingerbread Latte
- Mini Keto Gingerbread Cheesecakes
- Keto Gingerbread Biscotti
Keto Ginger Cookies Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 cups (224 g) almond flour
- 2 tbsp grassfed gelatin
- 1 tbsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp (0.5 tsp) baking soda
- 1/4 tsp (0.25 tsp) ground cloves
- 1/2 cup (113.5 g) butter, softened
- 1/2 cup (125 g) almond butter
- 1 cup (182 g) Swerve Brown
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- 2 tsp molasses, (optional)
- 1/2 tsp (0.5 tsp) vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325F and line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone liners.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the almond flour, gelatin, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, and cloves.
- In a large bowl, beat the butter, almond butter and sweetener until smooth. Beat in the eggs, molasses, and vanilla extract until well combined. Add the almond flour mixture and continue to beat until the dough comes together.
- Roll the dough into 1 inch balls and place a few inches apart on the prepared baking sheet. You should get about 40 cookies.
- Bake 5 minutes, then remove from the oven and gently press down a bit (to encourage them to spread). Return to the oven and bake another 7 minutes or so, until just barely golden brown. They will still be very soft.
- Remove and let cool completely on the pan.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional Disclaimer
Please note that I am not a medical or nutritional professional. I am simply recounting and sharing my own experiences on this blog. Nothing I express here should be taken as medical advice and you should consult with your doctor before starting any diet or exercise program. I provide nutritional information for my recipes simply as a courtesy to my readers. It is calculated using MacGourmet software and I remove erythritol from the final carb count and net carb count, as it does not affect my own blood glucose levels. I do my best to be as accurate as possible but you should independently calculate nutritional information on your own before relying on them. I expressly disclaim any and all liability of any kind with respect to any act or omission wholly or in part in reliance on anything contained in this website.
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Sounds like a delicious cookie recipe I would like to try. I only have pure monk fruit. and reduce the amount by 1/3. Also some sources say you can bake with pure monk fruit powder and some sources say it’s only for cold foods.Thanks!
I really don’t use it, because it has a strong aftertaste for me.
I love ginger crisp cookies, is there a way to make these crispy?
Thank you.
Please look at my Gingerbread Men instead. This recipe is not meant to be crispy.
Why not use brown swerve, for that molasses flavor?
Because this recipe was written before their Brown Swerve came into existence!
These are very good. Thought they had no flavour at first bit, but all those spices kick in by the end of the cooki – and right away on the second cookie LOL .
These were by far the absolute best keto cookies I have made to date. My fiancé’s favorite holiday flavor is gingerbread and he devoured these. This recipe will definitely be a keeper.
Thanks
Carolyn, I need to order Yacon syrup and almond butter; I will be ordering from Amazon. What brands do you recommend? Thanks so much.
I really don’t have a preferred brand of almond butter but just make sure it’s not sweetened with sugar (a few are). I’ve used this Yacon syrup before… https://amzn.to/3520sq4
I’m vegetarian, is there anything else I can use besides the gelatin to help with the chewiness? Thanks!
No, sorry. You can skip it but it won’t be the same.
I’ve made these cookies twice, and my second time was a lot better due to some tweaks that I highly recommend:
– I browned the butter, letting it cool before adding it to my mixer, rather than using softened butter from the fridge. It really helped deepen the flavor of the cookies!
– Instead of my usual mellow ceylon cinnamon, I substituted it with Korintje cinnamon from Indonesia, which is much “spicer” with more of a “bite” than ceylon.
– I doubled the cloves to deepen the flavor. I added some fresh ground black pepper to the batter, too.
– I know Carolyn likes Swerve, but many of us hate the cooling effect, so I used Allulose instead (1 1/3 cup). No cooling effect, no weird after taste, no blood sugar rising. It mimics sugar better than anything else out there! You don’t have to use Swerve just because Carolyn has it in her recipes — she doesn’t experience the cooling. It’s not a 1:1 substitute — when you replace with Allulose, you want to add about 30% more. And yes, it’s expensive, but the outcome is better and sweet treats should be occasional anyway. 🙂
All these tweaks meant that my second batch of cookies were properly darker than the first, and had a deeper, more complex and nuanced flavor, no cooling, and tastewise they were MUCH closer to the real thing. I encourage you to try these tweaks! They’re worth it.
Thanks Christina for the tips. Here in Australia we cant get either swerve or allulose at the shops yet that Im aware of so all bought online.
Ill use the brown sugar replacement and see how that goes. I dont like the cooling effect much so will definately try the allulose.
Good recipe they came out looking like the photos. I halved the quantity to 20. Next time will add more ginger. Also, as someone before me mentioned, I noticed the “cooling feeling.” Never noticed this before. Love your recipes. Thanks!
I noticed and aftertaste the first day, but for the second batch I left the doung in the refrigeratror for a day and didn;t notice the aftertaste. I can’t get Swerve here and I use Pyure – so far it has worked very well.
I made these a week ago and am just finishing the batch. They are really tasty! Full of ginger punch. I think I used less almond flour (dry ingredients) as it formed a think liquid rather than a dough that you could form balls from. Never mind, though because they still turned out great! Will definitely make these again and they are lovely in low sugar ice cream too! Thanks for the other lovely recipes!
Not bad. We like Swerve/Erythritol usually, especially as the sweetener for our favorite Keto Key Lime Cheesecake recipe.
However, for some reason, in this recipe, that “cooling effect” in the mouth from it seems very pronounced. That’s a little disappointing. I would like to try it again with a different sweetener…
Otherwise, this is pretty good as long as you allow it to stand on its own and don’t compare it to your grandmother’s famous Molasses Cookies. ????
I made these using 1/2C Swerve Brown & 1/2C regular Swerve and they came out great! I found I had to chill the dough slightly in order to roll into balls. So happy I now have a “good” ginger cookie recipe!
Possibly. I better make both to be on the safe side! LOL
Was this recipe originally done without the gelatin and almond butter? It seems that there used to be a cut out gingerbread cookie recipe, but for the life of me. I can’t find it. It wasn’t the spritz cookie. Could be it wasn’t one of yours, but I partially entered the ingredients into my cronometer and titled it as “Carolyn’s ginger cookies”. The problem is that I didn’t enter all the ingredients in and now I can’t find the original recipe. I just don’t remember almond butter being one of the ingredients.
Are you looking for my Gingerbread men? https://alldayidreamaboutfood.com/classic-gingerbread-men-low-carb-and-gluten-free/
Hi Carolyn,
Can you keep baked cookies in the freezer? Or is it best to just store the dough?
You can but they may harden quite a bit and lose that chewy quality.