Following a healthy diet is hard – especially when the cravings for rich, delicious chocolate chip cookies begin. Indeed, there’s something truly delicious and comforting about healthy chocolate chip cookies, especially when it’s warm, freshly baked and oozing with chocolate!
However, finding genuinely healthy treats can often seem hard on a diet, no matter how much you might deserve them.
Here are some key tips you should know so you can enjoy your own homemade healthy chocolate chip cookies. Or, failing that, we’ll give some ideas to help make shop-bought chocolate chip cookies a little healthier overall.
The Problem with Finding Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies
Sadly, it can seem a little difficult to fit these delicious treats into your diet.
After all, with the average medium chocolate chip cookie containing around 148 calories (potentially around 8-10% of your daily calories while dieting), and over 10% of your daily fat and saturated fat allowances, it’s easy why not. Still, it doesn’t have to be this way.
There are countless excellent ways to continue enjoying healthy chocolate chip cookies. So, we’ve come up with some tips and recipe ideas today to help you find the ideal options.
What’s more, when making your own healthy homemade chocolate chip cookies, we also recommend the following tips to cut down on the calorie content where possible and make your cookies that little bit more nutritious overall.
Problem-Solving Tips
- Cut back on the number of chocolate chips you include in your cookies! Substituting these with dried fruits (we recommend white chocolate chips and raspberries) could be a good option to cut back on a few of the calories without compromising any of the flavor.
- Additionally, to give your cookies a health boost, reach for dark chocolate chips over milk or white chocolate. This may change the flavor profile a little, but dark chocolate is known to be packed full of antioxidants (taking some of the guilt away from your cookies).
- Once your cookies have finished baking, take a very small cookie cutter and cut out a small amount from the middle of your cookies. Not only can this provide you with twice as many cookies, but it also (literally) cuts out much of the fat and calories from your cookies.
- Opt for whole grain flour, whole oats, or a mix of white and whole grain, to make your cookies more filling. This helps provide more fiber in your cookies, filling you up for longer and reducing your risks of reaching for more and more.
How to Make Homemade Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies
Here is a recipe for you to make some healthy chocolate chip cookies for yourself.
We recommend following the base recipe provided below and adding your choice of cookie flavors to make them unique to you.
Whether it’s white, milk, or ideally dark chocolate chips (or a combination thereof), you could enjoy a truly delicious treat without having to sacrifice your entire diet to do so!
Step by Step Recipe For Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies
To make healthy cookies, we recommend substituting some of the flour for whole grain oatmeal (as mentioned before).
This adds a little extra texture to your cookie, but without making it a completely oatmeal cookie.
Let’s face it, they just taste too healthy sometimes.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup whole oats
- 3/4 cup plain or whole wheat flour
- 3/4 teaspoon of baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 1/4 cup of butter
- 1/3 cup of granulated sugar (or substitute)
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (or flavor of choice)
- 1/2 cup applesauce
- Chocolate Chips
Method:
Mix 1 cup of whole oats in a bowl with ¾ cup of plain or (ideally) whole wheat flour. Then add ¾ tsp of baking soda. ½ tsp of salt goes in next. Then, mix the dry ingredients before heading to the next stage.
Now, cream ¼ cup of butter and 1/3 cup of granulated sugar until light and fluffy before beating in a large (ideally free-range egg). Add 1 tsp of pure vanilla extract (or another extract of your choice), and ½ cup of applesauce.
Finally, combine this with the dry ingredients to make your cookie batter, and add in your chocolate chips as desired.
Arrange into balls of cookie dough on your baking tray, and flatten slightly to help them spread evenly.
Then, bake for around 10-12 minutes at 175 degrees Celsius / 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Adjust as needed according to your oven.
Tip: To further cut the amount of chocolate in your cookies, rather than mixing in the chocolate chips, you could individually place these into the cookie dough after forming it into balls, so each cookie only has four or five chips
Other Cookie Alternatives
It’s possible that you don’t want to make your own healthy chocolate chip cookies from scratch. So, what are some alternatives? We’ve put together a few suggestions below for you to try, based on reviews and variety.
Highkey Sugar-Free Cookies are a massive win in the Amazon ratings.
These chocolate chip cookies are a keto snack, gluten-free, low carb and sugar-free.
Plus, there are more flavors to choose from so you can try one of the variety packs for more options.
Heavenly Hunks Oatmeal Dark Chocolate is a much-loved choice for a gluten-free cookie.
Fabulous for on-the-go, these cookies are Non-GMO, vegan, dairy free and lactose-free.
Also, with 7 flavors, you’re going to want to try these organic snacks.
Fiber One Soft-Baked Chocolate Chuck Cookies are soft-baked with rich chocolate chunks, and a fresh-from-the-oven taste.
With at least 20% of your daily fibre, these cookies are great when you’re on the go.
They contain 120 calories per serving, and there are 5 individually packaged cookies in total.
What Variation Will You Try?
While it’s important to try and eat as much healthy food as possible while on a diet, you still deserve treats from time to time, too. What do you like best? Homemade or one of these other lovingly made varieties?
Luckily, today’s healthy chocolate chip cookies could be the ideal snacks to add to your diet plan – so you never have to go without!
