These healthy carrot cake ginger cookies are deliciously soft in the middle and a lovely sweet treat without the massive sugar hit.

I had a craving for gingerbread biscuits one afternoon and after searching for gingerbread recipes online it transpired that there is A LOT of sugar and fat in traditional gingerbread recipes. I’m not against that but it wasn’t what my body was craving, so I set about making a spiced oat and carrot concoction that basically tastes like a fusion of gingerbread men and carrot cake and I’ve bestowed the name healthy carrot cake ginger cookies upon them!

Fresh healthy carrot cake ginger cookies

Healthy carrot cake ginger cookies
Makes 12
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes

Ingredients
100g oats
75g oat flour (made from blitzing 75g oats in a Nutribullet); you can use other flours here too, like spelt, buckwheat, wholemeal or plain
25g chia seeds (we used Chia Co)
1tsp baking powder
1tsp ground ginger
50g chopped nuts (I use whatever we have open, try walnuts, almonds or even mixed seeds, chopped, work well too)
2 carrots (about 200g), peeled and grated
1 inch fresh ginger, finely grated
1 organic egg, whisked
1tsp vanilla essence
20g coconut oil, melted and left to cool a little
10 dates, de-stoned (about 60g) combined with 90-100ml boiling water in a Nutribullet to form a loose paste, leave to cool

Method
Preheat the oven to 180 fan and place two baking sheets in the oven to preheat.

Combine all the dry ingredients together in a bowl: oats, oat flour, chia seeds, baking powder, ground ginger and chopped nuts. Set aside.

Add the carrots, fresh ginger, egg, vanilla essence, coconut oil and date paste to the dry ingredients and combine. You will end up with a very rough looking mixture with lots of bits of carrots poking out!

It should hold together quite well but if it’s still a little bit dry, then add 10ml boiling water and stir again. When you pick up a spoonful it should clump together nicely. Continue to add 10ml boiling water at a time until the consistency is right.

Using a desert spoon, take a spoonful and shape it into a little pattie. Repeat until you’ve used up all the mixture.

When all the patties are ready, take the hot tray out the oven, place a sheet of baking paper on it, or spray with a low-cal oil spray, and then place all your patties on it. Do it as quickly as possible so the tray stays hot and gives you cookies a nice crisp bottom.

Cook in a preheated oven for 20 minutes, checking on them at 15 minutes to check they’re not burning.

Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool.

Fresh healthy carrot cake ginger cookies

Check out our Ultimate guide to nutrition, or why not try some of these other sweet treats: Bakewell tart waffles; Apple bake recipe and Turmeric banana bread?