Low Fat Gingerbread Cookies with Applesauce

My kids love gingerbread cookies. They eat them all year round. 

I don't recommend trying to roll this recipe out - it's too sticky. I'd call this a drop cookie rather than a cut-out. The texture was cakey and the flavour was delicious!

I used my small cookie scoop to drop the dough onto the prepared sheet, then I used a straw to make button holes so I could decorate them later.

I chose to do a simple icing made of of confectioners’ sugar and milk. If you want to get fancy, here's an excellent recipe for egg-free royal icing. 

Low Fat Gingerbread Cookies with Applesauce
Adapted from Skinny Taste
Makes 54 Servings

Ingredients
For the Cookies

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• ¾ cup packed brown sugar
• ½ cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1 large egg
• 1/3 cup fancy molasses  
• 3 ½ cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon allspice
• ¼ teaspoon ground cloves

For the Icing

• ½ cup confectioners’ sugar   
• 1 teaspoon 2% milk
• ½ teaspoon vanilla    

Instructions

1. Beat the butter, sugar and applesauce together in a large bowl until smooth.
2. Add the egg and molasses and give it a good mix.
3. Combine the flour, baking soda and spices in another bowl and stir it into sugar and molasses mixture.
4. If you want to attempt to roll these out, divide the dough into two balls, flatten them and cover with plastic. Chill for an hour or longer before rolling. And I wish you good luck! You're gonna need a s***-load of flour. 
5. Preheat oven to 350F and line cookie sheets with parchment or silicone pads.
6. Save yourself and headache and do what I did. Use a small cookie scoop to drop balls of dough 1 or 2 inches apart on the cookie sheet.
7. Wet the back of a metal spatula with cold water (shake it off a little) and use it to flatten the balls to look like buttons. You’ll need to re-wet the spatula for each one. Then, take a straw and poke holes to make the cookies look like buttons.
8. Bake the cookies for 6 minutes (this depends on the size of them) until they start to turn a little golden on the bottoms and are firm to the touch. Cool completely before icing.
9. To make the icing; combine the sugar, milk and vanilla in a cup. It should be thick enough to hold a shape when piped. Add milk a few drops at a time if it seems too thick.
10. I cut off the tip of a plastic baggie and put the icing in there, then decorated the buttons as pictured above.
11. Let them sit on the counter until the icing hardens, then you should be able to stack them in an airtight container for a week, or freeze them for longer.