Adventures in the Kitchen with Michelle

That crazy Michelle sent me this post for “diet” sugar cookies. I fully believe that life is too short to eat “carrots at Christmas”. (Like all those fitness magazines like to advise you on avoiding weight gain by eating the low cal stuff on the buffet). But I will be making these cookies after the feasting season!  I did get to do a taste test–after consuming about a million calories at Michelle’s Christmas dinner!  If you ever get invited to Michelle’s for any meal–don’t turn it down. She is the best chef ever. Seriously, and she loves to cook!  And her mother loves to bake. No wonder I’m no good at either. Why bother?  Anyhow, here’s Michelle’s lo-cal sugar cookies that I will make laaaaater.  KT

I’ve been just bakin’ my little fingers raw – and watching my waistline expand a bit. That’s ok, January’s coming, and I’ll catch up. But to tide me over the holiday season I went looking for a sugar cookie that I could eat along side the boys and their sugar and shortening encrusted jewels. I surfed the Net and found a couple. Really? A couple – that’s it? Decidedly, the idea of a cookie that’s primarily sugar, butter, flour, and eggs….like a flat little Pound Cake, will be hard to convert. That combination will pack on The Pounds for sure. So, I thought I’d try out those ‘couple’ of recipes I found…..NOT ! For shame – how dare they even label them cookies! I feel like posting a nastygram on their sites – these were like vanilla flavored dog biscuits! Yuck – I’ll go without thank you.

And then desperation sets in and the Christmas music carries me to the kitchen to plot my revenge.

I will admit this was a challenge. Although the steps are really the same as other sugar cookie recipes, there are two things about this one. First, after the dough is made you must wrap it in plastic and let it rest for at least a hour (I left mine overnight…cause I had other cookies to make!). Second is, when rolling it out, only roll it once. It will warm super quick and become hard to handle. OK, ready… here’s what I came up with:

Step 1:Cream together the butter and Whey-Low, add in the vanilla and egg whites and get it smooth. Get the dry ingredients together and then add to the wet stuff.

Step 2: Get the dough into a ball on some plastic wrap, the flatten into a disc and get into the fridge. This delicate dough needs all the help it can get.

Step 3: When you’re ready, heat the oven to 375deg. Roll them out carefully and cut. Any dough left just roll into a gum ball sized ball and put on the cookie sheet instead of attempting to double roll this dough – I tried it and I lost the battle! (Actually, I set it aside and kneaded in some slivered almonds and baked them up. And those were good too.)

Step 4: There they are. Or are they? Can you tell the full fat sugar cookie – no? It’s the one on the bottom, slightly more brown. Let them cool and eat ’em up. Ooooor, make up a glaze of powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla (or just water) and drizzle over them. (Yes, Whey-Low comes in powdered sugar form too, and it’s good) You could even color it and feel all festive and stuff.

And the Recipe Analyzer says…… 45 calories and 2.6 g fat!! And these are 2 dozen, regular size cookies, not those tiny diet ones. Yes, I hate making those recipes for lo-cal cookies and find out the batch makes like 48 of them the size of a quarter! Now, I can settle in with my kerchief and my cookies (cause they’re good!) for a long winters nap….

Happy HolidayTo All – and Happy Baking You Little Elves!

Michelle