[psycgirl]

Hey ladies!

This is my absolute favorite cookie recipe. It is how I got my kids to eat sweet potatoes, and DH can go through a batch in an hour. They are soooo yummy hot from the oven! It seemed healthy enough to me (got it online somewhere), but I was hoping ya'll could give me your opinions on how I might count it to stay OP. What do you think?

Sweet Potato Cookies

1 cup sweet potato, cooked and mashed
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 TBSP light sour cream
3/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 TSP baking powder
1/4 TSP cinnamon
1/2 TSP nutmeg
3/4 cup quick cooking oatmeal

Boil potatoes until soft, then mash. Cream butter and sugars. Add sour cream and mix. Sift together flour, baking powder, and spices. Blend dry ingredients into the creamed mixture. Add sweet potatoes and mix.
Drop by TSP onto cookie sheet sprayed with PAM. Bake 10-12 minutes, just barely browning at edges.


You know, I have considered trying it with brown and white Splenda, and maybe even FF sour cream. Wonder if it would work.

Each batch makes about 30-36 cookies. Anyhow, what would this exchange as?
Thanks!

[Stevi-rocks]

Well...If you can sub all that butter for applesauce it might be somethin'!

[psycgirl]

Good idea...never used applesauce in place of butter before. I should try that! But, if the recipe makes 30-36 cookies, then isn't the actual butter in each one low enough to be okay?

[BlueToBlue]

I'm not sure how to figure out the exchange since I'm not following the LA Weightloss Diet, but here is the nutritional info in your cookies if you follow the recipe as it is written:

Servings: 36 (1 cookie)
Calories: 104
Fat: 4.e g
Sat. Fat: 2.6 g
Carbs: 15 g
Fiber: .7 g
Sugar: 7.7 g
Protein: 1.1 g

If you use margarine that is 70% vegetable oil instead of butter, you can cut the calories to 99 per cookie, the fat to 3.8 g per cookie, and the sat. fat to .4 g per cookie. I'm surprised by this--I would have thought using margarine would save you a lot more. Hmmm, maybe I need to rethink my use of margarine in baking. Apparently it's not helping that much in terms of calories and it has trans fat in it, which is supposed to be really bad.

If you are going to use margarine, make sure to use one with at least 65% vegetable oil. You generally can't bake with margarine with less than that.

I'm not sure you can substitute applesauce for butter, for the same reason that you can't use margarine with less than 65% veg oil. You can make this substitution for vegetable oil, but you might have a consistency problem if you try to do it with butter. If you did replace all the butter with applesauce, it would cut the calories to 72 per cookie, the fat to .5 g and the sat. fat to .2 g. A 30 calorie savings might be worth trying--maybe do a half batch. If the cookies don't turn out, you don't have to eat them.

- Barbara

[psycgirl]

Barbara:
Wow! You are so helpful!!
How did you come up with the nutritional info?
And, thank you for the information regarding butter, margarine, and applesauce. I will consider trying that one day just to see if it will work.
Thanks again!

[juliemarie]

Instead of replacing the butter with applesauce (although it works okay in some things-I dont know about cookies), I would replace the reg sugar with splenda and keep the brown sugar in. That should help a bit. All told-I bet each cookie could be counted as a starch or a fruit and a starch. Like their cereal bars.

[BlueToBlue]

Oh, you can also subsitute splenda for sugar in baking. Here is a link to a website with information on using artificial sweetners in baking: http://www.baking911.com/pantry/swee...artificial.htm.

If you replace all the sugar (brown and white) with splenda (but use butter, not applesauce), the cookies would be 76 calories per cookie with 8 g carbs (the fat content wouldn't change).

Since the recipe only calls for 2 tbsp sour cream, I don't think you'd see much difference in terms of nutrition by switching to fat free sour cream (although you could definitely do this).

- Barbara

[psycgirl]

Barbara:
Where are you getting these numbers???? So glad you are here!

[Tomkyn]

Splenda makes a brown sugar now. Even before I was on LAWL I used it when I made Turkey meatloaf, my BF can't have much sugar.