Tis the season for baking. Cookies might not be the most nutritional food, but since December is the month of gift giving, give yourself the gift of enjoying some Christmas cookies, guilt free. Here are a few types of cookies and links to recipes that are modified to make the cookies a little healthier.
1. Snickerdoodles– Snickerdoodles are a type of sugar cookie that are made with cinnamon sugar. In order to make this type of cookie healthier, Tanya Zuckerbrot replaces half the butter in the recipe with applesauce. She also uses whole-wheat pastry flour and replaces sugar with Splenda. With these little changes, the snickerdoodle still tastes yummy, but is only 73 calories per cookie and 3g of fat.
2. Whole-Grain Gingersnaps– Gingersnaps are flat brittle cookies that are made with ginger and molasses. Good Housekeeping makes gingersnaps healthier by replacing half the flour in the recipe with whole wheat flour. Also, they use fat free vegetable oil. These whole-grain gingersnaps only have 55 calories and 2g of fat.
3. Sugar-Free Peanut Butter Cookies– Peanut butter cookies have always been a holiday favorite, but are loaded with sugar. Kalyn’s Kitchen made a sugar-free peanut butter cookie by using Splenda. She also uses natural peanut butter in this recipe, which cuts out calories and fat.
4. Chocolate Chip Cookies– The basic chocolate chip cookie never gets old, but there are many ingredients that are in the dough that can be replaced or omitted to make it healthier. Katie from Chocolate Covered Katie makes what she calls “Not Guilty Chocolate Chip Cookies.” These cookies are whole grain and have half the sugar of a normal chocolate chip cookie. If you really want to be good you can omit white sugar all together. That makes these cookies only 23 calories and 0g of fat!
5.Thin Mints– Thin mints are known for being sold by Girl Scouts, but this recipe will make you want to put these on your cookie trays this season. 101 cookbooks came up with a thin mint recipe that has no trans-fat and no shortening. The cookies are made with all natural ingredients which makes them tasty, but healthy.