Like many folks these days, I've been reading about how to use less of just about all of the ingredients in my baking cupboard. A couple of weeks ago, I looked into baking cookies with half or less sugar -- what changes I would need to make, and what results I could expect.
Fortunately, someone else has already done a reasonable amount of experiments in this area, from baking cookies with half the sugar to 25% of the sugar for a variety of cookie types. Here's the link to the full article: King Arthur Flour: How to Reduce Sugar in Cookies and Bars.
The article experimented with 8 types of cookies: gingersnaps, buttersnaps, fudge brownies, cut-out holiday sugar cookies, chocolate chip, oatmeal-raisin, sugar, and vanilla-chai bars.
For my batch of cookies, I chose chocolate chip drop cookies and used half of the usual amount of sugar that was called for on the back of a bag of chocolate chips (your standard Toll House recipe). Instead of a combined 3/4 cups of brown and white sugar for the batch, I used a total of 3/8 cup of sugar (both brown and white sugar combined). My batch made 25 cookies. That's about 3/4 teaspoon of sugar per cookie in addition to the sugar contained in the chocolate chips. By the way, I sampled just the dough, and you know how cookie dough can have a slightly grainy texture from the sugar? This dough was smoother -- a lot like those tubes of dough sold in the refrigerated cases at the supermarket.
The King Arthur website indicated that cookies with less sugar wouldn't spread as much, so after forming balls of dough, I flattened them all slightly. The cookies still held more of a mounded shape than the completely flat cookies that I'm accustomed to. However, unlike some other cookies which are rather soft and cakey, these cookies still had a crispy edge to them (which I especially liked). And they were definitely sweet. Next time, I'll try flattening the dough even more to produce a larger and flatter cookie.
The King Arthur website also suggested refrigerating the cookie dough overnight before baking. This rest period for the dough allows the sugars to caramelize better, resulting in a cookie that tastes sweeter. Since I didn't bake a control batch (following the regular recipe), I don't have an adequate way to compare sweetness of my half-sugar cookies with how they usually turn out. But I can say this, we enjoyed the cookies very, very much and didn't care that I only used half the usual amount of sugar. The flavor was rich and deep.
I thought the results of the KA's experiments were interesting. As you might guess, cookies that had a sweet extra ingredient, such as chocolate chips or raisins, gave the consumer a greater sense of sweetness than cookies which didn't have such ingredients.
In addition, the KA's experts indicated that with considerably less sugar, other flavors become more prominent -- spices took on a larger flavor profile in a cookie, sometimes overwhelmingly so, and baking soda became more pronounced. Because they recognized that baking soda was more pronounced, I did use slightly less soda in my batch. The recipe called for 1/2 teaspoon baking soda. I used a shade less, somewhere between 3/8 teaspoon and 1/2 teaspoon. My batch had no detectable soda taste to it.
King Arthur's article had a bunch of helpful nuggets for reducing sugar content in homemade cookies. It's worth a quick read.
I'm not in any danger of running out of sugar soon, but I am being cautious with my supplies. The bonus was that I made a very tasty cookie that may be better for my waistline.
I think I'll continue reducing sugar in other cookies and bars, using some of King Arthur's suggestions and experience to guide me as I alter favorite recipes.
