Ginger Turmeric Vanilla Cookies Recipe

ginger turmeric cookies recipe

These healthy golden ginger turmeric cookies that are flour free and easy to make. This cookie recipe is low sugar with the sweetness coming from bananas. Perfect with cashew vanilla frosting for a decadent dairy-free cookie.

These turmeric cookies are suitable for vegan, plant-based, refined sugar-free, wheat free, whole food and general healthy diets. The cookies contain oats but you can use gluten-free oats if you’re following a gluten-free diet.

Ginger Turmeric Vanilla Cookies Easy Recipe

If you don’t like turmeric then think about halving the amount in these cookies, but you don’t really taste it with the other flavours. I don’t like turmeric on its own but it works great in these ginger cookies. This golden spice is said to have many health benefits that are currently being studied.

Turmeric contains high amounts of a compound called curcumin that has powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties.  The fat from the cashew nuts helps the body to absorb the curcumin as it’s fat soluble.

Ginger Turmeric Vanilla Cookies Video Recipe

Play on YouTube

Remember to use gluten-free oats if you want these healthy cookies to be gluten-free. Use oats that are soft and powdery as they grind up well. In my experience all oats, apart from the jumbo tough oats that keep their shape after being cooked, grind into a good fine powder suitable for this recipe.

I use a small jug blender to grind up the oats, but you can just use instant oats instead. A 600w bullet type blender is easily enough to make oat flour from whole oats.

A plate of Ginger Turmeric Vanilla Cookies

These cookies didn’t quite turn out how I expected as I planned to sandwich two cookies together with the cashew cream but this didn’t work. The end result was still good but to make oreo type cookies you would need to make much smaller cookies.

I kind of like that they have that orange golden colour where they would blend in perfectly on a platter of deep fried junk food. Of course, these are very pretty healthy turmeric cookies and full of vitamins and minerals.

Half eaten Ginger Turmeric Vanilla Cookies

I iced the bottom flat side of these turmeric cookies as it kept more of the golden colour after being baked but frosting either side will still work great. Just cool your icing enough in the freezer first so that it isn’t too runny.

Coconut butter can be used to thicken the icing, this is made from whole coconut that is blended until creamy. It retains all of the fibre and can be used in place of coconut oil as a whole food alternative.

If you are following an oil-free diet then leave out the coconut oil and be very sparing with the water as your icing will be runnier.

For a higher protein chocolate cookie check out my quinoa chocolate cookies. It’s a similar recipe but whole quinoa is sprouted to make a plant protein healthy cookie.

Yield: 16 healthy cookies

Ginger Turmeric Cashew Cookies

ginger turmeric cookies recipe

Quick and easy healthy cookies recipe. These golden cookies are ginger and turmeric flavour with a creamy cashew frosting. Vegan and gluten free when made with gluten-free oats.

Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 25 minutes

Ingredients

COOKIE INGREDIENTS

  • 3 Bananas
  • 1½ cups / 200g ground Oats
  • 2 tbsp ground Ginger
  • 1 tbsp Turmeric
  • pinch of Salt
  • pinch of Black pepper

CASHEW VANILLA ICING

  • 3/4 cup / 115 g Cashew nuts
  • 2 tbsp Sweetener such as Maple syrup
  • 1 tsp Vanilla
  • 2 tbsp Coconut oil or Coconut butter, optional – sub with extra water
  • a splash of Water for blending
  • a sprinkle of Turmeric or Ginger to top with

Instructions

  1. Mix all of the dry cookie ingredients together. The oats should be ground into a reasonably fine flour, a small blender jug will do this in 30 seconds.
  2. Mash the bananas with a fork and then mix with the dry ingredients.
  3. Spoon onto a baking tray, try to make them the same size and a roughly round shape.
  4. Bake at 180C / 350F for 12-15 mins until they start to get a bit of colour. You will smell a banana caramely smell when they’re cooked.
  5. Take the healthy cookies out of the oven and leave to cool and firm up.
  6. Blend all of the cashew vanilla icing ingredients together.
  7. Place in the freezer for 5 mins to firm up.
  8. Ice the cookies and then sprinkle with a pinch of turmeric or ground ginger.
  9. Keep in an airtight container in the fridge and enjoy within three days.

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Nutrition Information

Yield

16

Serving Size

1

Amount Per Serving Calories 187Total Fat 9gSaturated Fat 3gTrans Fat 0gUnsaturated Fat 5gCholesterol 10mgSodium 156mgCarbohydrates 22gFiber 2gSugar 5gProtein 6g
ginger turmeric healthy cookies with cashew vanilla frosting

Did you know that for many hundreds of years oats were just considered animal feed in most places apart from Scotland, Ireland, Germany and the Scandinavian countries.  After Scottish settlers spread oats to other countries the health benefits were uncovered and became a popular human food across the earth since the 1980s.

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58 thoughts on “Ginger Turmeric Vanilla Cookies”

  1. Far too much ginger which overpowers the cookie. And I did not make the icing and so the cookie was very spicy and not sweet enough despite the banana. If not doing the icing it requires some sort of sweetener in the cookie mix.

    1. Bastian Durward

      Sorry to hear that, as always adjust to your tastes as all my recipes are high in natural produce and they have significant variation 🙂

  2. These are so good and easy, thanks so much for the recipe. They are great just as they are even without any icing. I did add more ginger than the recipe as I like a spicy ginger cookie!

    1. Bastian Nest and Glow

      I’m glad you like them Laura, they are one of the recipes on the site that I make most weeks 😀

  3. I just made these thinking the ingredients sounded good, and I’m sorry to say they are the most awful tasting “healthy” cookies I have ever made. The oats were overwhelming, so the biscuits tasted like cardboard. The icing, nice as it was did nothing to improve them

    1. Bastian Nest and Glow

      Hi Jacqui, sorry this didn’t turn out well for you. I’ve posted variations on this recipe several times and hundreds have loved the results. What kind of oats did you use? Were they very finely ground? Were the bananas very ripe?

    1. Bastian Nest and Glow

      Thanks Karen, glad you like it 😀 I add a pinch of turmeric to many things to boost the nutrition and give a golden colour 🙂

  4. Hi Nest & Glow,

    You are a GODSEND! Thank you! I seriously don’t think that I could love you more or have more gratitude for you than I currently do. Would you consider selling your amazing cook book in kindle format at all? Just that after moving a lot and travelling I’m a minimalist, and find that books (as much as I love them and as amazing as they are) are heavy, cumbersome and take up a lot of space. So please let me know when it’s available in kindle format!

    Again THANKK YOU! ARGHHHHH SO GRATEFUL FOR YOU IN THIS STUPID WORLD WHERE no one understands that we are all one, and when they intentionally hurt another they are stamping on their own foot. When the negative output comes back to them in an unrecognised form they ain’t got a clue! Ok rant over lol.

    1. Hi there, thanks so much for your lovely words! I’m not sure if it will come out on Kindle – it needs at least a weeks work to format it probably more and I don’t have a device to test it on. Then there is the matter of Amazon taking 70% of the royalties for an ebook and having to pay vat on sales. But I do sell it myself in PDF format if that is suitable? People have said it works well on a Kindle fire https://www.nestandglow.com/book . That is a “great” way of saying it, great as in articulated and explained well rather than the thought of it great 🙁

  5. I’m sorry to say I also had a bad experience with these. Knowing these can be spicy and bitter ingredients, I added honey, but they were still too bitter. My bananas were pretty big so I thought with the honey, they would balance. I will experiment with them in the future as they did bake nicely.

    1. Sorry to hear that Cari. I do wonder what made them so bitter – The turmeric? Please do adjust and give them another go. So difficult with everyone’s tastes and how much natural food varies. Let me know how you get on next time

  6. I’ve heard you have to have pepper with turmeric in order for the nutritional benefits. Does the turmeric still add nutritional value without the pepper? I love ginger by the way. I’m baking them right now! Can’t wait to try them.

    1. The pepper helps with the absorption because of the fats I believe, so if you’re having this with the frosting that’s easily enough fat for that. Some do always add a pinch of black pepper to turmeric. Let me know how you like it!

      1. Fat and pepper are both important for good absorption by the body. Fresh ground black pepper contains piperine, which actually helps your body to better utilize many herbs and spices, turmeric included. Can’t wait to try these cookies! We don’t eat bananas, so I’ll be substituting, probably a batch with apples and a batch with pumpkin.

        1. Thanks so much for this delicious healthy cookie recipe. I used less ginger though about 1 tbsp. Even my kids who could be quite picky sometimes, loved them. The cashew icing very yummy. Thanks for posting

  7. I do have one more question. As o was counting calories my cookies ( each) came to 169.

    I am trying to figure out what I did wrong.

    I did make only 11. So mine we’re a bit bigger

  8. Hello! I just found your website two days ago, and just made these cookies. I’ve done the oat/banana combo many times, but this variant never occurred to me. They are lovely – especially with the frosting!

    May I make a suggestion (while acknowledging that my minor error is entirely my own fault)? Could you indicate directly in the recipe that the oats are meant to be very finely ground? I ground mine medium-med fine, and the cookies are still lovely, but I looked back through your narrative and realised they are meant to be ground down to flour! When these are gone, I am eager to try again with oat flour.

    Just a suggestion for impatient folks like me who skip straight to the recipe! 🙂

    1. Thanks so much for making a suggestion, really helps me to edit the recipes to make things clearer. Just added a bit in now to make things clearer. I know 90% don’t read the long text – it’s kinda needed to make enough to do this, but in my defence I only talk about food.

      Really glad to hear you liked the recipe, hopefully the sentence added now will prevent anyone else from making the same mistake.

  9. Hi, I am very appreciative of the recipe, I take turmeric and ginger on a daily basis naturally with the black pepper also, I have various aches and pain’s, due to age, I added vanilla, a teaspoon, plus honey and brown sugar, a tablespoon of each as I wanted the children to possibly like them, the two year old enjoyed them, I added the turmeric and the ginger to the icing mix instead of on top, immensely happy, we all have different tastes otherwise the crazy world would be even more crazier then it is,

  10. These are yummy! Love the Ginger bite to it! The frosting is amazing…although mine came out darker (I did use a little maple syrup).

  11. I made the frosting but Wonder If there is a missing ingredient?? Mine just looks likes extra crunchy peanut butter. I’m very confused.

    1. Bastian Durward

      Maybe just add a bit more liquid? Recipes high in natural produce like all of mine can need some tweaking as there is a high amount of natural variation and blender types

  12. I have 2 questions. First, can fresh grated ginger be used in the recipe? If so, how much would you use? I tend to prefer the taste of fresh ginger instead of powdered. Second, my son has a cashew allergy. What do you suggest using instead of cashews for the icing?

    1. Bastian Durward

      Hi there, for the ginger it’s difficult to answer as depends on how much you like ginger and how fine the grater is. I would do it quite fine and about 1 heaped tbsp but I do like it strong. Try macadamia nuts or sunflower seeds in place of the cashews.

  13. Just made these. Really tasty. Are they supposed to be crispy/brittle when cooked? Mine are very soft and “rubbery” (still delicious) and I’m wondering if I baked for long enough?

    1. Bastian Durward

      Hi there, no they’re supposed to be softish – you baked them just right. I know what you mean – rubbery doesn’t sound good but its really tasty 🙂

  14. These are really good. Of course they are spicy but are great for the tummy. The icing is a delicious sweet nutty flavor that cools down the ginger. Yum!

    1. Bastian Durward

      Thanks Amanda, glad you like this recipe also. I just love the spices in these cookies with the creamy cashews

  15. Hi there, I just wanted to add something that might help those who aren’t used to the strong turmeric flavour in cooking. When you add cinnamon to recipes with turmeric, the cinnamon tones down the strong flavour/taste of the turmeric without causing the recipe to taste strongly of cinnamon – both sweet and savoury recipes. Definitely worked when getting my hubby used to eating turmeric in many dishes. Hope this helps.

  16. These were pretty good! I’m new to the healthy vegan cookie concept, but I had tumeric and don’t know what to do with it. I added a little syrup to the batter and also warning, tumeric will stain your baking sheets. I scrubbed all night and had no luck getting the stain out, might be wise to use parchment paper.

  17. I thought this was the WORST COOKIE COOKIE RECIPE I EVER TRIED! It certainly needed more moisture. The cookies did not bake properly and were too flat and TO HOT to the taste.

    1. Ah so sorry to hear that 🙁 as it’s made with natural produce and oats and bananas can vary so much you might need some tweaking. How ripe were your bananas? Lots of people have tried this and love it so you may want to try again with some more banana

  18. Hi Bastian! These cookies were seriously scrumptious. Husband and I loved them! Subbing ground coconut for the oats, which I can’t eat, worked for me. I baked them for a bit longer, until they were browning at the edges and set. I also halved the ginger and turmeric amounts, as I thought they might be too intense for us. The icing was super yummy and a perfect addition. I’ll definitely be making these again.

  19. Hi! Wondering if you know the nutrition facts for the frosting alone? Tastes so good, thank you so much for sharing this amazing recipe!

    1. Bastian Durward

      Sorry not sure exactly, but it’s pretty basic so should be easy to work out from the packets of cashews and sweetener 🙂

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