Baking Delicious Cookies With Half the Sugar

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.

Quick Garden Greens

I've mentioned that we harvest early spring greens from our garden from perennials, self-seeding annuals, and greens that I plant in fall to overwinter and harvest in spring. Those greens are very welcome in March and April. 

However, they finish up long before any of the main-season garden veggies are ready for harvest. There seems to be this void in the harvesting calendar beginning in May and lasting until the first or second week in June for my garden.

Enter the veggies that I plant for quick greens. I think all vegetable gardeners know that radishes are a fast-growing from seed vegetable. I take advantage of their spritely growth by seeding them thickly with the sole intention of growing radishes for their greens. I can harvest quite a lot of vegetable matter in a small space by planting my radish seeds close together.

peas in the back, radish greens in the middle, and spinach in front
spinach and radish planted in same week

I sowed these seeds around the first of April, and now there's plenty of greens for harvesting. I made a tuna-noodle casserole the other night and used radish greens as part of the vegetable component. I've also been using some of the greens added to eggs at lunch for myself. And, one of my daughters is making lentil-vegetable curry tonight and using more of radish greens.

To harvest radish greens, I pull up any plants that are crowding others, or about 1 in every 3 or 4 plants. I leave the plants which have roots that look like they could develop into a sizable red radish. Until those are ready, we're enjoying these lovely greens in a time of the season that usually doesn't offer much ready in the garden.