My grandmother used to make these, and I was thinking about making them for my coworkers for easter. But- I don't want to eat anything that would sabotage me, so let's see if we can fix this recipe....

INGREDIENTS:

* 4 cups flour
* 2 cups sugar
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1/2 tsp salt
* 1 cup shortening
* 2 eggs
* 1/2 cup buttermilk
* 2 tsp vanilla

PREPARATION:
Preheat oven to 375F. Mix all ingredients into a firm dough. Roll out, and use a cookie cutter to make circles. Bake until brown and golden.

I'm thinking whole wheat flour, either splenda or agave nectar for the sweetener, heart healthy margerine for the shortening?

Whatcha think? Is this attempt doomed to fail? And icing- any ideas on how to fake that? (Alton Brown on Food Network once made an icing using avocado.... hmmmm... but the green icing? I could pipe on little flowers and bunnies, I guess.)

i think you could sub in the appropriate stuff but i think it would not taste the same... in addition it really is junk food even if it's made with healthy ingredients

(whole wheat flour, smart balance, splenda) you need the sugar for body so you could not use all splenda

best advice from this long term beacher... EASTER is special to you... make the cookies... have one... call it a treat and move forward....

That's a good idea.

I may try the avocado icing idea, though, since I adore Alton Brown and I think that he couldn't possibly be trying to poison me....

We'll see. I may or may not, depending on how I feel. Baking is a big job.

I have wanted to try his avocado icing for a while!! I agree with Nessa, bake them and eat one. I want to bake some cupcakes this weekend to get some icing practice, but I will be delivering them to the office Monday morning! DH can have one, but I just want to make some bunnies out of icing!! Haha!

while i find have one call it a treat and keep going really does work for me... my progress is very very slow... so the caveat is that your loss will be slower the more you treat....

USCarchie! I don't think we've "met" yet.

I absolutely love these kind of challenges!!!

I understand where Nessa's coming from. Sometimes I try to adopt that kind of view, but it's only after nearly 4 years (my anniversary is April 23!) of this WOE, I feel like I know my body a lot better than I did when I started.

My feeling, in general, is that the sugar is what makes me a "crazy person." Even one cookie is enough to cause me to have all the physical side effects of sugar and it leads to tons of awful choices or a lot of guilt and deprivation feelings as I try to hold myself back from having 500 more cookies. Plus, I have to do Phase 1, just for that one cookie, because even that much sugar makes me crave again. It's not worth it. We're all different and I really appreciate that Nessa brought that option up.

What works for me is making things SBD-safe so I still feel like I'm getting my treat but I don't have the physical side effects. I've done this a lot in the last four years and I've found a ton of great recipes!

Okay, so let's SBD-ize this puppy!

INGREDIENTS:

* 4 cups flour (Unless these are pretty "hearty" cookies, I'd use 3.5 cups of Whole Wheat Pastry Flour/White Whole Wheat Flour and 1/2 cup of good quality white flour--I use Bob's Red Mill. You could also try making all 4 cups WW Pastry Flour)
* 2 cups sugar (when you mix sweeteners, it makes them have less aftertaste. I usually use a mix and it would look something like this: 3/4 cup of Splenda, 1/2 cup of Erythritol, 1/2 cup of Xylitol, and 1/4 cup light brown sugar. I judge the amount of real sugar based on how many servings the recipe makes. If it turns out to be a tiny amount of brown sugar in each cookie, I think it's worth it to add it for consistency and browning. )
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1/2 tsp salt
* 1 cup shortening (With recipes that call for this, I use a good oil shortening I find in the health food section at my grocery store made by Spectrum Naturals. You could also try using a mix of butter and the shortening, or if you want a crispy cookie, you could use oil for part or all of the fat. You know the cookie recipe better than I do, so you can choose what's best. Personally, I use butter in many of my baking recipes, but I bake rarely and keep myself to portion sizes, so I don't worry too much about the fat. )
* 2 eggs
* 1/2 cup buttermilk (I'd up this to 3/4 cup to make up for the extra dryness WW flours add...you may find that you need a bit more than that--play with it)
* 2 tsp vanilla

PREPARATION:
Preheat oven to 375F. Mix all ingredients into a firm dough. Roll out, and use a cookie cutter to make circles. Bake until brown and golden.

Let me know if anything is confusing. I get my Erythritol at www.netrition.com and my Xylitol from the Nature's Marketplace section (health food section) of Wegman's (grocery store).

If you think the WW pastry flour will be too thick, you can try a mix of that and coconut flour--it's defatted, unsweetened coconut--it does a great job of making things light and fluffy, but it does add a vague coconutty taste. I get that at Netrition.com too.

Another option would be to use a little soy flour. A great biscuit recipe I found in a cookbook called for a mix of WW and soy flour. It made them light and a tiny bit sweet. Interesting!

Wow, Laurie, you are quite the mad scientist! Good to know who to come to for baking issues!

Um......why do we NEED cookies? (I'm such a a purist but I believe stuff like this made me gain my weight so should be avoided until I'm at goal!)

Good point, Ruth, in that we probably don't *need* cookies, but sometimes they sure are tempting little devils. And in my office, every day I must resist their siren call.

Hi, Laurie! Thank you for all of your ideas, wow, I had no idea it could be so complicated. I may have to do some more research into this... there are a lot more elements than I could have imagined. I've never even heard of some of those ingredients!

I don't know, I feel like I was addicted to sugar and have amazed myself at how I've been able to withstand it, so I think that I may just abstain, but I was wondering if it was possible to make this healthy (or as healthy as it could be) like so many of the fantastic recipes on this forum that almost feel like cheating. The Belgian waffles, for example.

I will mull this over more. Maybe when I'm in P3 I can have a real cookie. I'm afraid that if I have a real cookie now, I'll be in trouble.

I'm still super curious about the avocado frosting! I saw that I can make splenda powdered sugar by pulverizing powdered sugar and corn starch in the food processor. Corn starch is probably not allowed on the SBD, though, I guess, but then, I am not sure.

Hi, USCarchie!

I've been bopping myself on the head since Thursday because I totally meant to include information on icing/frostings! They are tricky because a lot of them use powdered sugar and while we could try to make powdered Splenda just as you described, the cornstarch could be a problem, just like you noted. (as a side note, I haven't tried it yet, but did purchase some powdered erythritol recently. I got it from www.netrition.com. It's a great sweetener--it's NOT a sugar alcohol, so there aren't digestive side effects. Even Stonyfield Farms is using it in their Light organic yogurts!)

I've found the most effective icing is cream cheese, milk, and sweetener (Splenda works fine). I've found tons of recipes and haven't even had a chance to try them all. Just search for "sugar free icing" or frosting and you'll find 'em. Here's one I like: Sugar Free Cream Cheese Icing

I do think we can all learn a lot of different things that might help us become better bakers with SBD. But I don't think you have to learn those things to make them good! So please don't be intimidated by all the ingredients I mentioned. I started out with just Splenda and WW flour. Over time, I learned more about other things. I make cookies for Christmas gifts every year (a tradition I inherited from my mom) and so I've had tons of practice with cookies! What I've come to do is pick recipes I know will be easier to modify and work well with SBD-safe ingredients. I avoid things made with tons of powdered sugar. I avoid things like shortbread that don't have much flavor from anything but the flour and sugar (and rely on a lot of unhealthy fats). I look for recipes that involve other grains, like oatmeal, or substitutes for flour, like ground nuts. I also use real semi-sweet or dark chocolate and save those (when it comes to me) for the one day a week when I have real chocolate.

Here's a great example--it uses real chocolate, so they feel decadent. It uses ground nuts in place of part of the flour, so you don't notice any toughness from WW flour. I save these for that one day a week--and I actually only make them at Christmas so I don't get bored with them. Chocolate Walnut Truffles are in the Desserts-Phase 2 section of the Recipe forum.

Ruth, as for the cookies thing--I do see your point, and I've heard it expressed by others here at 3FC. However, I think if you think that cookies caused the problem, saving them to eat only when you get to goal isn't a great idea, at least not for me. Not only does saving them make my mind think that cookies are a special treat (aka "being at goal isn't a good enough "treat" -- I need cookies to really feel good about it") and that I can't be trusted with them unless I'm "skinny," but it also sets up the idea that when I get to goal, I'll suddenly be able to eat anything Iwant without gaining weight. I've had that image many times--I'd cut stuff out while dieting and only let myself have it when I got to goal. Then I'd gain all the weight back, plus some, partly because I felt so deprived and partly because I just wanted to feel normal and eat like I thought everyone else was eating. I find that if I don't let myself have something at all, I obsess over it and feel deeply upset about it. But if I tell myself that I can have it, but it just has to fit within the guidelines of SBD, I'm fine.

Of course, these are my issues--and just like I feel comfortable incorporating baked goods into my everyday eating, there's no reason why you should feel uncomfortable about saving them for goal. It just wouldn't work for me.

My personal goals are: to stop thinking about some foods as bad and others as good, to see food as a fuel rather than as a treat or punishment, and to figure out a way of eating that I can sustain for the rest of my life. I don't want to change my eating at all when I get to goal (unless I find that I have to do so in order to maintain). I know that SBD does consider Phase 3 a different kind of eating, but I think if I try to incorporate those kind of foods into my diet after I get to goal, I'm going to find myself gaining again. Making things like cookies or cake or whatever a part of regular life (though I don't eat them daily!) makes me see them as "regular" instead of "good" or "bad" and keeps me from thinking of them as a special treat reserved for special days. Then, when the "special days" come, I can focus more on what the day is about and less on "what amazing thing will I get to eat today???" Does that make any sense? That's my reason for "why cookies at all?" Anyways, off the soapbox already, Laurie!

You have some great recipe ideas, Beachgal! I'd like to add a favorite sugar-free icing that I make to this list of suggestions. I make a package of instant sugar-free pudding according to the directions, and fold in an 8 oz. tub of Cool Whip. You can use any flavor of pudding you want, and it's light and yummy!

Hi I have done some low-fat baking successfully in the past & here is how I would change the recipie:

* 4 cups flour
* 2 cups sugar
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1/2 tsp salt
* 1 cup shortening
* 2 eggs
* 1/2 cup buttermilk
* 2 tsp vanilla

I would remove the shortening & the sugar & replace it with 3/4cup of apple sauce unsweetened & add more apple sauce if you need to.

I'd only put in egg whites--the yolk is the fat & the white is the protein.

Leave the flour as is & the rest of the ingrediants.

another option or even with the low-fat recipie--try to just make SMALLer versions of what you would normally! & remember to eat less lol if you can! That is my issue, when I have smaller cookies, I just think "Oh I can eat more" but then I tend to overeat & would have been better just eating the reg. ones in the first place...

Good luck!

yes but white flour is not beachy!