Tips for “healthier” cookies

Christmas time is cookie time. But as good as they might taste, our favourite Christmas treats also contain vast quantities of calories, fat and sugar.
In the following article, our head chef Emanuela Fischer shares a few tips for baking “healthier” cookies.

Use wholemeal flour!
It’s perfectly fine to sieve wholemeal flour – this still leaves you with whole grain. Only the larger bran is removed, with nutritious elements such as the germ remaining. Sieved wholemeal flour is easier to work with.
Use nuts!
Nuts are fatty, but they contain “good” fats. They are also rich in B vitamins, minerals and micronutrients. Replace some of your flour with finely ground nuts and your cookies will have more flavour. Choose from walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, Brazil nuts …
Butter or margarine?
I recommend butter, the more natural product. Margarine is made from hardened vegetable oils, because vegetable oil is not naturally solid. Although the trans-fat content of margarine is well-regulated in supermarkets nowadays, in my opinion butter is the right choice for baking. For cooking, in contrast, high-quality vegetable oils should be used (rapeseed oil, walnut oil, hempseed oil).
Reduce sugar content!
The cookies should still taste good, of course, but many recipes are very sweet – in most cases, it is possible to reduce sugar content by about 1/3. Although this has no influence on the calorie content of the cookies (because sugar contains the same amount of calories as flour), it increases complex carbohydrates and reduces simple carbohydrates.
White or brown sugar, beet or cane?
This is a question of taste. In my opinion, brown sugar simply has a stronger flavour, meaning less is needed. It is not necessarily “healthier”. The brown colour comes from the molasses added to the white sugar; however, the minerals it contains aren’t enough to supply the body’s entire demand. Whether the sugar comes from cane or beet is irrelevant – it always contains sucrose.
Use dried fruit!
Dried fruit tastes sweet, and also contains minerals and fibre. Keep a lookout for unsweetened dried fruit (mostly plums, dates, figs, apricots) and be careful with exotic fruit such as pineapple, mango and papaya, as these often contain a lot of sugar.
Replace jam with fruit spread!
Dried fruit can be made into a great fruity spread for filling cookies. The recipe can be found above.
Bake small cookies!
We all tend to want to try one of each type of cookie, and when they’re big ones the calories really start to add up. Smaller cookies also look classy.