Reduce Cholesterol and Lose Weight with This Oatmeal Cookie Recipe

You can learn to make cookies that are good to eat and very good for you. These recommendations will not only show you how to reduce fat and calories in your cookies, with specific measurements, but will also tell you how to do it. And you'll have a valuable source of nutrition in a low calorie, low fat yummy cookie.

How can you make cookies that are good for you and nutritious? Consider the type of diet that you need to live by, and substitute the ingredients accordingly.

Butter replacement. Low cholesterol is a great trick for cookie production. A secret that works is replacing butter with a Plant Stanol Ester product, such as Benecol or Take Control. You’ll be adding no trans fats and only 1 gram of saturated fat per teaspoon. But the big impact of this is that it works to reduce cholesterol. Do not let the product soften too much before using. Add it right from the tub, tablespoon for tablespoon for butter. Replace all but 2 tablespoons of the butter with the replacement product to make the cookies less crumbly. There won’t be much impact to the taste when using these margarines, but the health benefit is big. They are also more costly than margarine, but the health benefit is worth the price, which is a bit higher than butter.

Sugar replacement. Next, replace the sugar with one half to three quarters of Splenda. You’ll need to use some real sugar in order to have a sweet cookie. The Splenda does not give the cookie as sweet a taste as sugar does, and adding more Splenda won’t do it either. Instead stick to a minimum of half sugar half Splenda, or add half of a ripened, softened, mashed banana for every half-cup of sugar.

Egg Substitute. When using an egg substitute in cookies, use 1/4 cup of egg substitute such as egg beaters http://www.eggbeaters.com/products/index.jsp for each egg the recipe calls for. In cookies, I’ve noticed no difference in texture or taste from using the egg substitute. If you use them in cake, I use 1 real egg with every cup of egg substitute to make sure the texture is not affected.