One bite of these soft gluten free pumpkin molasses cookies, and you will want more. These decadent homemade cookies have a delicious combination of pumpkin and ginger flavors. They are perfect throughout the holiday season! Make a batch of these cookies in about 20 minutes!
These gluten free pumpkin molasses cookies are the best of both worlds, fall pumpkin and holiday gingerbread. They are soft cookies with delicious sugar coating.
Enjoy them plain, or drizzle white or dark chocolate over these cookies! If you love baking cookies, check out all of my yummy gluten free cookie recipes!
Why Make This Cookie Recipe:
I may be biased, but these are one of the best gluten free cookie recipes ever. They are so full of flavor.
- This cookie recipe is modeled after my wildly popular Gluten Free Gingerdoodles cookie recipe. The pumpkin makes them even better!
- These are the perfect cookies to bring as a hostess gift throughout the fall and winter seasons.
- These cookies are fun to make, and you can freeze extras.
- You can make a batch in just 20 minutes!
You may also love trying my Gluten Free Pumpkin Snickerdoodles Cookies too!
This is one of my favorite gluten-free flour blends for cookies, cakes, pie crust, biscuits, and muffins! (Do not use this flour blend for yeast recipes.)
Ingredient Notes:
- Gluten Free Flour Blend – I tested this recipe with King Arthur Measure for Measure Flour. Other blends should work, but if you use a starchy gluten free flour blend, you may want to use a little less flour.
- Xanthan Gum – If your flour blend doesn’t contain either xanthan gum or guar gum, you must add one teaspoon. This is what holds the cookies together.
- Molasses – You can use regular or blackstrap molasses. Be sure to check my list to ensure your molasses is gluten free.
- Pumpkin – Be sure to use puree and not pumpkin pie filling.
- Egg- Use size large.
Tips For Success:
- Use room-temperature butter and eggs. Using butter and eggs at room temperature sounds odd, but it dramatically helps how your cookies will turn out. You’ll thank yourself later if you try it.
- Take special care to measure correctly. If you add in too much gluten free flour or other ingredients, it can mess with the cookies as they bake. If they don’t have the proper ratios of ingredients, you may end up in a disaster.
- Use a cooled
cookie sheet when baking. Don’t take a hotcookie sheet and put the batter on it, or I promise the cookies won’t turn out. They start baking immediately, and it messes with their shape of them. Use a couple of sheets and rotate them out when making large batches of cookies. - Don’t let the cookies sit on the pan too long. After they have baked, only let them sit for up to 5 minutes on the baking sheet. The pan will still be hot and continue baking them otherwise.
Recipe Step-By-Step Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350º F and move the oven rack to the middle position.
Step 1: In a large bowl, add the dry ingredients and whisk to blend them together. I love using these mixing bowls because of the no-slip bottoms. It prevents the bowls from sliding on the counter while I mix cookie dough and other baked goods.
Step 2: Add the wet ingredients to a smaller
*You can also use a standing mixer with a paddle attachment.
Step 3: Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix them into a soft cookie dough.
Step 4: Sorry, the coloring in this photo is off. This will give you an idea of the texture of the cookie dough.
Step 5: In a small
Roll each cookie dough ball in the sugar.
Step 6: Place the sugar-coated cookie dough balls onto a parchment paper
Remove the cookies onto a wire rack to cool. The cookies are really soft, so be careful moving them. They firm up as they cool.
I can’t wait to hear what you think of my newest gluten free pumpkin molasses cookie recipe!
Tips And Recipe FAQ:
Use canned pureed pumpkin or puree freshly roasted pumpkin. Do not use pumpkin pie filling.
Store these pumpkin cookies in an airtight container in the refrigerator. They will keep fresh for up to 4 days.
Store these cookies in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to four days.
Yes, you can easily freeze these cookies. Place cooled cookies into a freezer zip bag and squeeze the extra air out. These cookies will keep fresh for up to 4 months in the freezer.
More Gluten Free Holiday Cookies:
- German Gluten Free Pfeffernusse
- Easy Iced Gluten Free Pumpkin Cookies
- Gluten Free Cornbread Cookies
- Gluten Free Eggnog Crinkle Cookies
Gluten Free Pumpkin Molasses Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 cups gluten free flour blend * see note
- 1 cup sugar Divided. ¼ is for rolling the cookie dough.
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
- ½ teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
- 1 large egg
- 9 tablespoons butter softened
- ¼ cup pumpkin puree
- ¼ cup molasses
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350º F.
- In a large bowl, add the flour blend through the pumpkin pie spice in the ingredients list. Use a wire whisk to blend these dry ingredients together.
- In a medium mixing bowl, add the wet ingredients and whisk to blend.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix well.
- Add ¼ cup of sugar to a small bowl.
- Use a cookie scoop to scoop cookie dough balls. Roll with your hands and then roll the cookie dough into the sugar.
- Place the sugar coated cookie dough balls onto a parchment paper baking sheet. Leave 2 inches around each for room to spread.
- Bake for 10 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and cool on a cooling rack.
Notes
- I tested my recipe using King Arthur Measure for Measure flour blend. Others should work as well.
- If your blend doesn’t contain xanthan or guar gum, add one teaspoon.
- Store in an airtight container for up to 4 days in the refrigerator.
- Freeze in a freezer bag for up to 4 months.
SPECIAL NOTE
Please know that every gluten free flour blend has a different starch to grain ratio. If you use a blend I didn’t test, you may need to adjust your moisture levels in your baked goods.
Nutrition
Nutrition Disclaimer
Nutritional information is an estimate provided to you as a courtesy. You should calculate the actual nutritional information with the products and brands you are using with your preferred nutritional calculator.
I made these last weekend. They are soft with a good molasses flavor. My husband, who is not GF really liked them. These are the perfect ginger molasses cookies. I would be proud to serve these to guests.
I am so glad everyone loved the cookies. You made my day letting me know they are good enough to serve to company!
Delicious!!
Thank you so much, Jenny!
Sandi!!! Thank you so much!!! This is a really great recipe with exactly what I was looking for; a chewy cookie with wonderful warm flavours of pumpkin, molasses, and spice! It worked like a charm and soooo delicious! I made a wee change to the “sugar”, because I love brown sugar! I used a 1/2 cup packed brown sugar and 1/4 cup white sugar in the dough and, as per the recipe, used another 1/4 cup white sugar to roll the cookies in. Having done this, I likely should have increased my bake time by perhaps 1-2 minutes to set the centres a bit more, but they still turned out with a nice chewy sugary crisp on the outside and a lovely moist inside. I used Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1 to 1 Baking Flour. The recipe was so well laid out, easy to follow(I’m an “occasional baker”), they were so fun to make, and turned out so well! I just had to take a moment to say thank you for sharing your teaching and baking gifts and for making me love gluten free baking that much more!
I am so glad you loved this recipe!! I love pumpkin all year long so I was really psyched to see you do too!
Omg, these are just incredible and remind me of childhood bear paws molasses cookies. However, the second time I made the recipe for some reason the dough became incredibly liquidy and as a result I got an oven baked pancake cookie. I have no idea what went wrong…
Hi Stephanie, that is indeed odd the recipe worked the first time, but not the second. Did you use a different gluten free flour? The second batch sounds like you used a starchy blend that maybe liquified a little?