Topic: cookie recipes

DIY Girl Scout Cookies: 7 Healthy Recipes For Samoas, Thin Mints and More

It’s Girl Scout cookie season in many cities, and even we health nuts go weak in the knees at the sight of a Thin Mint. But even though those girls are cute and their cookies taste great, we have some bad news: They’re not looking out for your health. Their cookies are processed, full of ingredients that you don’t want in your system (corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and artificial coloring among them), and not so hot in the nutrition department. Making your own might not cut all the calories, sugar, and fat, but you can stick to natural ingredients, and even make them vegan, gluten-free, and low(er) in calories in fat, thanks to the recipes we found for healthier versions of your favorites. More »

Morning Links: Healthy Recipes From The Daily Green

Healthy Recipes From The Daily Green – Eat up these good-for-you recipe ideas, including vegan chocolate pudding and a broccoli cheese polenta pizza. (The Daily Green)

Toss Your Cookies – Samoas, Tagalongs, and Thin Mints actually contain small amounts of unhealthy trans fats, even though the FDA doesn’t make the Girl Scouts of America disclose that nutrition information. (Chicago Tribune)

Can’t Stand Your Commute? – Listen up to this ten-minute commuter-oriented meditation podcast from Headspace. (The Guardian) More »

Healthy Baking: Vegan, Gluten-Free Valentine’s Day Thumbprint Cookie Recipe

Remember those awesome Sugarplum Cookies we made for Christmas here at Blisstree? The festive cookie recipe from Babycakes’ Erin McKenna is not only vegan and gluten-free; it also contains heart-healthy flax meal and uses healthy butter and dairy alternatives like coconut oil and applesauce. I love them so much (and so do my non-vegan, non-gluten-intolerant friends) that I decided to play with the recipe to make a Valentine’s Day version, flavored with hazelnuts, lemon zest, strawberry jam and made festive with a heart-shaped thumbprint. These are better than any Valentine I ever got in school. More »

Healthy Baking Recipe: Best Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

This week’s installment of Healthy Baking is another healthy take on an all-American classic: Chocolate Chip Cookies. But I’m going to be straightforward: There’s only so much you can do to make chocolate chip cookies healthy before they taste like crap. The problem is, you’ve been eating these cookies since you were old enough to chew, and you’ve probably long held your firm opinions about which kind are the best: dense and chewy or large, thick, and crispy; you know what you like. So once you start fiddling with whole grain flours, alternative sugars, vegan butters and egg replacers, it’s hard to make a convincingly good chocolate chip cookie. More »

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: Brown Sugar Pecan Sandies

If you didn’t get around to all the holiday baking you’d hoped, good news: The 12 days of Christmas officially began yesterday, so you’ve still got an excuse to keep making cookies like these Pecan Sandies. The other good news is that these are extremely simple to make (you don’t even need cookie cutters), but they taste and look like you’ve labored over them over your entire holiday weekend. More »

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: Raspberry-Filled Swedish Rye Cookies

I adapted these cookies from a recipe on one of my favorite cooking blogs, 101 cookbooks, and have loved them ever since. They’re completely whole grain, and though they do contain sugar, they’re not over-sweet, making them healthy and, in my opinion, delicious. My addition of raspberry jam not only complements the rye and cream-cheese flavors in the cookies, but it also makes them look particularly festive this time of year. More »

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12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: Raspberry Involtini

Involtini is Italian for “roll-up” (or at least that’s my rough translation), and can be applied to meats, vegetables, and in this case: pastry. These roll-up cookies can be made any time of year, but they’re so good-looking and tasty that I think they make a perfect addition to the Christmas cookie plate. They take a little time to assemble, mostly because you have to keep the dough chilled throughout the process to keep things from breaking and stretching, but the resulting almond-raspberry flavors are worth the wait. Just pick a good movie and relax while you wait for the dough to chill in between steps. More »

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies

These peanut butter kiss cookies are an Egan family classic during the holidays. (At some point I suppose we stole the recipe from somewhere, but the details are fuzzy.) Problem is, they’re not the healthiest Christmas cookies in the recipe box, and they’re so good that one usually wants to eat at least a half-dozen in one sitting. (And believe me, I have.) So, in a health-conscious effort to make these classics slightly less caloric, fattening, and full of sodium, I used Special Dark Hershey’s Kisses (one kiss: 20 calories, 1 gram total fat, 2.3 grams sugars); and all-natural, organic peanut butter (no salt, additives, preservatives, or sugars). Somewhat healthy, sincerely festive, and seriously simple to make. No electric mixer required, which means more time for holiday cheer.

Check out the recipe and photos, and look for our other 12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: More »

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: Spice Krinkles

Warm spices like ginger, cinnamon, and cloves are part and parcel of the holiday season; no Christmas cookie collection would be right without a spicy gingersnap or krinkle on the plate. These spice cookies, adapted from a recipe in this year’s The Essential New York Times Cookbook, call for lots of spices and a little molasses. They’re wrinkled, sugar-crusted tops give way to a chewy (but thin) interior that’s incredibly satisfying. More »

Christmas Recipe Roundup: 12 Holiday Food and Drink Ideas

Because it’s Christmastime and you’re absurdly busy, we’d like to help make this holiday season a little less stressful for you. (Ha!, you say?) In that festive spirit, we present a roundup of 12 of Blisstree’s best food- and drink-related holiday posts (including recipes, cocktails, celebrities, and cookie cutters), all in one place:

Healthy Baking That Actually Tastes Good: 10 Sugarless, Flourless Cookie Recipes

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: Vegan, Gluten-Free Sugarplum Cookies

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Buckeyes

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: Mint Chocolate Thumbprints More »

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Buckeyes

It’s a stretch to call buckeyes a “cookie,” but the combination of peanut butter and chocolate is damn good, so I think it’d be a shame to disqualify them from your holiday cookie platter. And no-bake desserts can actually be a good thing: As much as I love warming up my kitchen and filling my apartment with the smell of fresh-baked cookies, sometimes I need my oven for other stuff. More »

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