Holiday cookies can be sweet, healthy

The holidays are here … and my bathroom scale is getting nervous.

Packing on pounds used to be one of my holiday traditions. That is, it was until I figured out how to put certain holiday foods on a diet. And that is the trick to navigating the holidays in a way that lets you enjoy yourself without scaring your scale.

Holiday cookies are a great example. One typical sugar cookie can have as many as 150 calories. For perspective – you’d have to shovel snow for 30 minutes to work off a single cookie. And who can stop at just one cookie?

When you put holiday cookies on a diet, it’s not just a matter of swapping out all the sugar with artificial sweeteners. In baking cookies, sugar does a lot more than sweeten. It adds volume and it caramelizes. It also makes your cookies moist. Artificial sweeteners can’t do that.

In this recipe, I’ve opted for a natural sugar – palm sugar (also called coconut sugar). Resembling brown sugar, it’s made from the sap of palm trees. Palm sugar contains tiny amounts of calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, riboflavin and thiamin, as well as trace amounts of protein. It’s widely available in international and natural foods stores.

For a punch of crunch, the flour base is whole-wheat pastry flour. And there’s virtually no fat in these cookies. You won’t miss it, thanks to a blend of sweet potato and egg whites, which help stretch the butter. And since it is the holidays, we can’t leave off the icing (made healthy with fat-free cream cheese).

The result? A typical spice cookie can have 220 calories and 12 grams of fat. Mine has just 2 grams of fat and 55 calories.

Now that is something to feel festive about.

Healthy Holiday Spice Cookies

Rocco DiSpirito is author of the “Now Eat This!” and “Now Eat This! Diet” cookbooks.

2 tablespoons butter, softened

2 tablespoons unrefined palm sugar or jaggery

3 packets stevia sweetener powder

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

Pinch ground cloves

2 tablespoons pureed cooked, peeled sweet potato

2 tablespoons liquid egg white

2 teaspoons vanilla extract, divided

1/2 cup whole-wheat pastry flour

1 tablespoon flax seed meal

2 tablespoons fat-free cream cheese, softened

Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, combine the butter, palm sugar, 2 packets of the stevia, the baking powder, nutmeg and cloves. Mix until well combined. Add the sweet potato, egg white and 1 teaspoon of the vanilla, then mix until combined. Beat in the flour and flax seed meal.

Shape the dough into a round, flat disk. Place the disk between 2 sheets of waxed paper. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough to 1/8-inch thick. Place the dough on a baking sheet and place in the freezer for about 10 minutes, or until the dough is very firm.

Remove the dough from the freezer and peel off the top sheet of paper. Use 2 1/2- to 3-inch cookie cutters to cut out 12 cookies. If necessary, place the dough back in the freezer after making the cutouts. This will help the dough firm back up, making it easier to transfer the cutouts from the paper to the prepared baking sheet.

Place the dough cutouts on the parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake for 7 to 8 minutes, or until the tops are just dry and edges are just starting to brown.

Transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool.

To make the frosting, in a small bowl combine the cream cheese, the remaining packet of stevia and the remaining 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Whisk until smooth. Spoon the icing into a piping bag fitted with a small open tip. Decorate the cooled cookies with the icing.

Yield: 12 cookies

Approximate nutrition per cookie: 53 calories, 2 grams fat (1 gram saturated, 37 percent fat calories), 1 gram protein, 7 grams carbohydrate, 5 milligrams cholesterol, 1 gram dietary fiber, 45 milligrams sodium.