Best Diet Cookies

Eating cookies on a diet may seem like an oxymoron, but it’s not impossible. You may not be able to down your favorite batch or a roll of packaged treats, but you can make a healthy alternative. Satisfy your sweet tooth with ingredients that won’t upset your diet. Indulge yourself without feeling guilty.

Oats

Avoid cookie recipes with white flour, which is a relatively empty carbohydrate. It won’t be long before your hips are wearing the flour. Instead, use oats and wheat flour that are not turned into sugars, but which will work through your system and scrub out your digestive tract. These heavier items also tend to make you feel fuller, suppressing your appetite. Make oatmeal cookies with your favorite additives into a heart-healthy alternative to a flour cookie. Experiment with using wheat or white wheat flour in your traditional recipes. Remember that wheat flours tend to be heavier. You may need more baking soda, baking powder or eggs. As you start to experiment, cut wheat flour with white, a little at a time.

Fruits and Vegetables

Use fruit as an additive in your cookie recipe, instead of fatty chocolate, other flavor chips and nuts. If you are trying to add more antioxidants to your diet, add dried cranberries, raisins, dried blueberries, dried strawberries and more. Chop up dried mangoes, apples and other preserved favorites. Fruit brings a natural sugar to your cookies. Look for dried fruit that does not have additional sugars added to them. Shredded coconut, without added sugar, brings an indulgent tropical flavor to cookies. Even some vegetables, such as shredded carrots, are naturally sweet and taste great in cookies.

Nuts

If you are trying to bring more protein to your diet, chop and toast nuts and add them to your favorite cookie recipe. Replace chocolate chips and other additives with nuts for a sugar-free option. Use peanut butter as a wet ingredient in your cookies. Almond and other nut meals can replace flour for those allergic to wheat or those avoiding carbohydrates.

Fats

One of the biggest culprits in a cookie is fat. Shortening, oil, butter or margarine all seem to make their way into recipes. Use margarine if you want to avoid the fat of butter. Use coconut oil in place of margarine or shortening to avoid trans fats. Pumpkin puree, mashed bananas and applesauce can replace or cut down on oil in many recipes. If you need to use oil, choose a heart-healthy option, such as grapeseed or olive oil.