Suger-Free Cookie Recipes actually tried. Here's the verdict.

I don't know about you, but when I first became a mom, I tried to shelter my daughter from all the evils in food. I bought her organic milk. I tried not to give her sugary cereals. I made my own baby food with simple, wholesome ingredients. Of course, she wasn't the greatest eater. I distinctly remember one day a friend had some Gerber puffs (they looked like Cheezies in toddler food packaging), and this was the one thing my daughter decided she liked to eat that day. My heart sank.

Of late we have noticed she doesn't like to eat many of the foods she adored as a younger child. She is three, and quite picky. Her younger brother, who is 14 months, will eat pretty much anything: most veggies and meat, bread, cheese, yoghurt, fruit. We are hoping this continues, and he doesn't follow in his sister's footsteps. However, I think it happens to most children. When they start to think for themselves, they get a little (or a lot) picky with their food choices.

I came across some recipes for sugar-free cookies in the Alive magazine my mother picked up at her health food store. The website, alive.com, has lots of other recipes, if you are interested in checking them out. I decided to make a couple of their sugar-free cookie recipes to see how they would turn out, and how they would go over with my kids.

"Sugar-free" in this case means you aren't using sugar in the recipe. The cookies are sweetened with dried apricot purée or dried date purée. You make the purées by boiling the dried fruit in enough water to cover them. You cook them until the water is almost all absorbed. Then you purée the mixture.

I tried two recipes:

Lemon Cookies with Cinnamon Date Topping

These elegant cookies consist of a lemony crust topped with a mixture of dates, pecans, almond butter, and cinnamon.

2/3 cup (160 mL) chopped Medjool dates
1/3 cup (80 mL) chopped pecans
1/3 cup (80 mL) date purée
2 Tbsp (30 mL) almond butter
3/4 tsp (4 mL) cinnamon
1 cup (250 mL) whole wheat pastry flour (try Bulk Barn)
1/2 tsp (2 mL) baking soda
1/2 tsp (2 mL) salt
1 Tbsp (15 mL) lemon zest
1/4 tsp (1 mL) cinnamon
3/4 cup (180 mL) apricot purée
1/4 cup (60 mL) organic canola oil

Preheat oven to 375 F (190 C).

In small mixing bowl, mix dates, pecans, date purée, almond butter, and cinnamon. Set aside.

In medium-sized mixing bowl, mix flour, baking soda, salt, zest, and cinnamon and incorporate apricot purée and oil.

Using a 1 oz (30 mL) cookie scoop, measure dough and form into balls, flatten with your palms, and place on oiled baking tray. Top each cookie with 1 Tbsp (15 mL) date mixture.

Bake in preheated oven, watching carefully, for about 14 minutes or until edges are browned. Let cool. Serve!

Makes 16 cookies.

Each serving contains: 133 calories; 2 g protein; 6 g total fat (1 g sat. fat); 19 g carbohydrates (12 g sugar); 3 g fibre; 112 mg sodium

Source: alive #335, September 2010


Chocolate Chip Mango Sesame Cookies

Mango, sesame, and chocolate—are these tasty
combined in a cookie? The resounding answer is yes.

1 cup (250 mL) whole wheat pastry flour (at Bulk Barn)
1/2 tsp (2 mL) baking soda
1/2 tsp (2 mL) salt
1/2 tsp (2 mL) ground ginger
1/4 tsp (1 mL) cinnamon
1 Tbsp (15 mL) sesame seeds
1/4 cup (60 mL) chocolate or carob chips
1/2 cup (125 mL) chopped mango
3/4 cup (180 mL) apricot purée (see cookie makeover tips)
1 Tbsp (15 mL) sesame oil
3 Tbsp (45 mL) cashew butter

Preheat oven to 375 F (190 C).

In medium-sized mixing bowl, mix flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, seeds, and chocolate chips. Stir in mango.

Incorporate apricot purée, sesame oil, and cashew butter into flour mixture. Using a 1 oz (30 mL) cookie scoop, measure dough and form into balls, flatten with your palms, and place on oiled baking tray.

Bake in preheated oven, watching carefully, about 17 minutes or until golden. Let cool. Serve.

Makes 16 cookies.

Each serving contains: 77 calories; 2 g protein; 3 g total fat (1 g sat. fat); 11 g carbohydrates (5 g sugar); 2 g fibre; 113 mg sodium

Source: alive #335, September 2010

Now, the lemon cookies didn't get a "lemony crust" in my case. I don't think I put the full tablespoon of lemon zest though, so this might be the reason. I found the lemon cookies much more time consuming to make because I didn't have date purée already made. I had some apricot purée leftover from my son's days of eating purées, and I had enough to make the mango chocolate chip cookies. All I had to do was defrost the cubes.

The lemon cookies themselves weren't super tasty, but the topping was awesome. I would just eat the topping, and leave the cookies. My daughter didn't like either the cookie, or the topping. My son ate them both, quite readily. My husband put some leftover chocolate icing from the fridge on the cookies, and said they were good that way. This is how he ate the mango chocolate chip cookies too.

The mango cookies, as I said, were much easier to make. I think I would put more of the spices in the mix to give it a bit more zip. The mango is an interesting addition, but makes for quite soft cookies. I was able to get 19 cookies from this recipe. (I only got 12 cookies for the lemon recipe). Again, my daughter didn't really like these. She tried to eat only the chocolate chips, but couldn't find enough, so gave up. My son loves these cookies. I think they taste okay. Certainly not super sweet.

Neither of these cookies look like traditional cookies. They are quite lumpy, and have the same texture of hermit cookies. They are soft, and small. I am not sure if the "benefits" of eating more wholesome cookies outweighs the effort of making the purées. However, odds are, your kids aren't really going to like these, unless they have been already raised on a wholesome, vegan-type diet.

If you are looking for these recipes (and a couple other sugar-free cookie recipes) online. Go to alive.com. Click on recipes, desserts. These recipes are towards the end of the 140+ recipes in this category.

Let us know if you have better success getting your children to eat them.