How to count calories in homemade Christmas cookies that someone else baked?
Help! We received a large tin of homemade cookies as a gift, and I would like to build them into my daily food plan. There are many different kinds of cookies (chocolate chip; M&M cookies; thumbprints; spritz; iced sugar cookies; Russian tea cakes; etc.) With the exception of the Russian tea cakes, most of the cookies are roughly 2 to 2 1/2 inches in diameter.
How many calories would you estimate for each one? I am the type of person who likes to be as accurate and meticulous as possible on her calorie-counting, which has worked for me so far.
Does 75 or 100 calories sound reasonable? 150? Or how would you count them? I have no way of knowing which recipe was used (and recipes can vary widely in their calorie counts, depending on the proportion of the ingredients).
Thanks in advance for your help!
Last edited by DoingMyBest79; 12-21-2011 at 12:09 AM.
The best way to count baked items is by the ounce/gram, because their weight gives a "worst case scenario." No food can have more than 9 calories per gram (and only 100% fat can have 9 calories per gram). A fat-free food can have no more than 4 calories per gram.
Most breads, even sweet breads have about 100 to 125 calories per ounce. Cookies have more fat, more sugar, and less water, but the calories are likely to fall between 125 and 150 calories per ounce (or per 28g).
So if you have a food scale, it's fairly easy to get at a decent estimate (or at least a worst-case scenario one).
You don't have to assume the absolute worst case (9 calories per gram) and you have to assume more than 4 calories per gram (because there's usually at least some fat in cookies) - so 5-6 is a good estimating number.
It's one of the reasons I absolutely love my food scale, it makes it easier to estimate calorie counts.
Cookies, chocolate chip, commercially prepared, regular, higher fat, enriched - 1.00 X 1 cookie (average weight of 1 cookie, variety of brands) 58 calories.
Cookies, chocolate chip, prepared from recipe, made with butter - 1.00 X 1 cookie, medium (2-1/4" dia) - 78 calories.
Cookies, sugar, prepared from recipe, made with margarine - 1.00 X 1 cookie (3" dia) - 66 calories
So 75 seems reasonable. 100 would be reasonable, too. Especially for the ones with icing or more add-ons than would be typical of a toll-house chocolate chip cookie.
I sometimes have a cookie from Subway and those are pretty big. On thier website the cookie's nutritional info says that each cookie is 200-ish calories so I would say a hommade cookie, being half the size of a Subway cookie is around 75 to 100 calories.
If I am in a situation where I want to eat something sweet that someone else made, but don't have a scale, I will usually count 35 cal. per good-sized bite. This is about the equivalent of a teaspoon of sugar or honey.
Thanks to everyone for your help!!! I am going to weigh them and use 5-6 calories per gram, depending on how many "extras" (M&M's, chocolate chips, icing, etc.) each one has.
kaplods - that was great information about the calories per gram. I am going to use that information for estimating breads, too!
I usually base mine on the 200 calorie Subway cookie . So smaller then that ~100 each is a good number for my mother in laws homemade (about half the size)
I haven't had cookies since before I started loosing weight so they aren't something I've had to count. Glad I stumbled across this so I can get a somewhat accurate count and enjoy myself a little while staying on track
I usually base mine on the 200 calorie Subway cookie . So smaller then that ~100 each is a good number for my mother in laws homemade (about half the size)
And I thoiught that I was the only one who did that. LOL
How to count calories in homemade Christmas cookies that someone else baked?
