Healthy Diet for December 7 – It’s a Cookie Exchange

Cookies, cookies, and more—an array of homemade cookies, served on a holiday plate, marks the season. But who’s got time for all that baking? And how to resist indulging if you do bake?

Easy solution: just exchange! Invite a group of friends or coworkers to bring four dozen of their favorite cookies to swap, along with an empty container. Everyone goes home with a fabulous selection of four dozen cookies.

A few tips for healthier, tastier cookies:

• Toast nuts (see March 8). You get more flavor from less nuts.
• Switch flour. For a chewier, more fiber-rich bar, replace one-third all-purpose flour with oat flour. Grind your own oat flour from oats in your food processor.
• Substitute dried fruit. Use dried berries, cherries, raisins, or chopped dried apricots, plums, or apples in place of chocolate chips. A little crystallized ginger is good, too.
• Skip the raw cookie dough. Raw eggs in the dough carry a salmonella risk.