Healthy cookies?

If you’ve read much of my blog, you’ve probably gathered that I enjoy food. Specifically desserts and baked goods. I’m a huge fan of chocolate. Mmmm…

Due to my desire (or the reality that I am actually doing this) to bake delectable desserts as much as three times a week, I’ve decided to make a change. You see, all of that baking is pretty unhealthy. I’ve made a commitment to bake once every two weeks for the next few months. I know, that’s crazy, right?  It’s actually been hard. Is that pathetic? Probably yes.

Tonight I baked cookies. I was craving oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (I am not a raisin fan) but have been wanting to experiment with the whole “healthy” baking concept. So Tyler I looked up recipes that don’t include sugar (and no artificial sugar!) or butter. I found one that looked pretty good, so we gave it a shot.

Now, there is one important thing that you must do before baking a “healthy” version of a cookie or brownie or whatever it is that you’re going to make. You have to remind yourself that your cookie (or cake or brownie, etc) is NOT going to be just like the full fat version. This will be a version of the original—perhaps a cousin to it. If you want the final product to taste just like your favorite brownie or cookie, you will be disappointed. I mentally prepared myself for this before I began baking.

We decided to follow this lovely recipe. The recipe calls for honey instead of sugar (yum), and substitutes olive oil and applesauce for butter. We followed the recipe exactly, except we added lots of cinnamon, and used sorghum instead of molasses (we didn’t have any). Sorghum is kind of like maple syrup. And of course we used chocolate chips instead of raisins.

In the end, the cookies tasted completely different from an original oatmeal chocolate chip cookie, but in a very good way. You can really taste the honey and the cinnamon and I think that overall the flavor is really yummy and satisfying. So if you’re up for an experiment you may want to give the recipe a shot. Those of you opting for the delectable original, keep fighting the good fight!

-jenny