Kidney-Friendly Ginger Cookies for the Holidays Recipe - KNI - Kidney Nutrition Institute (2024)

Gingerbread cookies are the quintessential cookie during the holiday season but can be high in potassium. So we set out to make kidney-friendly ginger cookies that you are sure to love!

Check out how we modified this recipe for a lower potassium spin on a classic holiday treat!

A Kidney-friendly Ginger Cookie You Can Really Really LOVE

All of us have some smells, flavors, sounds, etc… that pour holiday memories and warm feelings into our souls. Gingerbread is one of mine. My mom’s gingerbread wasn’t the most incredible I’ve ever tasted, it was kind of spicy.

But the cookie dough was out of this world. And the smell of gingerbread and a warm house in a very very cold town is the kind of smell that is as much Christmas to me as candy canes and sparkly lights.

Why is Gingerbread on the Naughty List for Kidney Disease?

The problem with gingerbread for people with kidney disease is just one ingredient – molasses. Molasses is why gingerbread ends up on a lot of “naughty” lists this time of year.

One tablespoon of blackstrap molasses has 450 mg of sodium per NCCDB. Just one tablespoon has more potassium than almost 2 oranges. Dark molasses and light molasses have less – around 300 mg each per tablespoon but it is still a significant amount of potassium.

Kidney Friendly Substitutes for Molasses

The quintessential smell and flavor of ginger cookies doesn’t necessarily come from molasses. The spices are the key, especially the ginger! I love substituting for all things molasses to lower the potassium.

You could also use dark corn syrup or for an interesting flavor try maple syrup instead. All are low in phosphorus, but the potassium content varies widely. If you MUST have molasses, then opt for something other than blackstrap.

Check out how all of the sweeteners stack up against one another for potassium and phosphorus:

Lower PotassiumSoft Ginger Cookie Recipe – Chewy Bite on Outside, Soft on Inside

I used this Soft Ginger Cookie recipe from Davita since I had heard rave reviews about it. When I did a cookie comparison last week for the gingerbread house we were making, I was surprised to see that this kidney-friendly cookie, on a cookie-for-cookie comparison, was a bit higher than a traditional gingerbread cookie.

This isn’t listed in the chart below, but the caloric content for one 2.5″ gingerbread cookie is 67 calories, while one soft ginger cookie is 142 calories.That means either the soft ginger cookies from Davita were twice as big (making them fairly comparable to a traditional gingerbread cookie) or just more calorically dense.

I’m not sure, but for me, it meant I could try pulling out the molasses and see if I still got a decent cookie. Sodium could be cut back with less baking soda as well or by using a sodium-free baking soda substitute.

Perfect Low Potassium Ginger Cookie Even Without Molasses

I swapped out the molasses for honey and still feel like I came away with a home-run cookie. Soft on the inside and just perfect on the outside. I happened to have gold sugar on hand from the gingerbread/cookie house and rolled my cookies in that instead of traditional sugar. Magic! The gold sugar took a regular gingersnap to a true Christmas level.