When folks ask how I eat and what I eat, I tell them I try to follow the
80/20 rule. Optimally, I’d like 90% of what I eat/drink to be oh-so-healthy.
More realistic, however, is an 80% goal. Calorie-wise and nutritionally.
But, I do love chocolate and I like baking cookies with my kids. So here
are some ways I make our baking treats a bit healthier:
We move to the dark side….of chocolate, that is! If you can locate some cacao nibs (the real stuff that is bittersweet and offers more antioxidant punch). If I cannot locate that, I will move from milk chocolate to DARK CHOCOLATE. I try to find chips with 70% cacao or higher.
LESS SUGAR. It’s that simple. I’ve experimented a lot with this and haven’t found a recipe yet that really needs all the sugar recommended. There are a couple of other things we do, also. We reduce the sugar by ¼ of what the recipe calls for and then we take what is left and split it 50-50 with brown rice syrup or agave nectar and sugar. Supposedly your body digests brown rice syrup slower. And that’s a good thing.
About that sugar spike slow down…the kids and I do a couple other things in this arena in order to slow the spike. We ADD FIBER. We throw in some whole flax seeds, ground flax seeds AND some whole, old fashioned oats.
Speaking of fiber, we also go a little NUTS. We chop up and add almonds & walnuts and throw in some pumpkin seeds giving us the benefit of fiber and good fats and protein.
Then, there are the FLOUR UPGRADES. Again, I like to do what I can to boost fiber and protein to make treats more nutritionally sound, so we use soy flour or whole wheat flour. Sometimes I use brown rice flour or quinoa in order to avoid gluten…which is fine for the kids, but doesn’t always work so well with me.
Last, we replace oils and butter with APPLE SAUCE and reduce the number of whole eggs by using a 1:3 ratio of whole eggs and egg whites the recipe calls for. Doing this reduces the cholesterol and calorie content.
And that’s it. We do this to many recipes and often throw in dried berries.