How to Bake Your Own Diet Cookies

Baking diet cookies is easier than you think

Does the scale reflect your love affair with cookies? Deciding to drop a few pounds doesn't have to mean that you have to leave the cookies on the shelf. With a few simple recipe substitutions, you can make your own diet cookies that keep you satisfied while the weight is falling off. You don't even need diet cookie recipes. Change a few ingredients in your favorite cookie recipes, and you can have diet friendly sweet treats anytime.

Things You'll Need

• Applesauce Artificial sweetener Wheat flour Flax seeds

Instructions

1. Swap out sugar in favor of artificial sweeteners. Splenda in particular is baker friendly. You can find sugar/sweetener blends for baking that reduce sugar usage by half, or you can opt to replace all of the sugar with sweetener. Gone are the calories and blood sugar spikes associated with 100 percent sugar cookies.

2. Replace fat with applesauce. Ditch the oil or butter called for in your favorite cookie recipe for an equal amount of applesauce to create nearly fat free cookies, or create a low fat cookie recipe by mixing part applesauce and part fat.

3. Opt for wheat flour. Using wheat flour in your healthy cookie recipe will not necessarily decrease the calories, but it will help mitigate the blood sugar spike white flour gives you that leads to weight gain. Further, if you choose a whole grain flour, you'll get the benefits of the extra fiber. Simply replace white flour with the same amount of wheat flour.

4. Use egg substitutes. Egg Beaters and other egg substitutes have fewer calories than whole eggs and are usually lower in cholesterol. Follow package directions to determine the correct egg substitute for egg ratio.

5. Try flax seeds. If you want to leave the eggs behind completely, use 1 tbsp. of ground flax seeds plus 3 tbsp. of water for each egg in your recipe. You'll significantly reduce the calories and get a hit of omega-3.

Tips & Warnings

• When you use applesauce, make sure it is unflavored. Wheat flour will make your baked good a little dry. You may want to reduce cooking time and add a small amount of additional applesauce/fat. Alternatively, try a white/wheat mix. Flax seeds can have a strong taste and don't work well in chocolate based recipes.

• Over consumption of artificial sweeteners can affect digestion.

References

• Recipe Substitutions from All Recipes
• Baking Substitutions for Healthy Cookies from Life 123

Resources

• Diet Bites Low Cal Cookie Recipes