Reduced Sugar Lactation Cookies, Attempt One: 40% Sugar

 

Disclaimer: I know nothing about nutrition / diabetes. I just googled "how to reduce sugar in cookies" and made this up.

Makes 18-20 cookies

Ingredients

Dry mixture

105g rolled oats

70g choc chips

65g oat flour

35g non-bitter brewers yeast [1]

30g flaxseed meal

10g malt extract powder (optional) [2]

4g baking soda

3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ginger

"Wet" mixture

100g banana, mashed

35g barley malt syrup

50g canola oil

1 egg

1/4 teaspoon salt

40g brown sugar

40g white sugar

Method

1. Mix together dry mixture in a large bowl to evenly distribute ingredients

2. Mix together "wet" mixture in another bowl (can be smaller than the first bowl).

3. Add mixed "wet" mixture into bowl with dry mixture and mix until combined. Chill in fridge for at least 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 180C (350F).Once dough is chilled, roll into balls (roughly golf ball sized, maybe 1.5 tablespoons each).

4. Place balls on a tray and gently press on them to flatten slightly (they will spread a little in the oven). Bake for 10 minutes, rotating the tray halfway if your oven doesn't heat evenly. Cool on a cooling rack.

These last a week baked, but go soft after a day. They can be frozen and thawed, but again, they'll be soft.

Notes

[1] According to comments from the recipe this was adapted from, it's important to get non-bitter brewers yeast. Most of the flavourful ingredients in the recipe are to mask the gross taste of the brewers yeast.

[2] I think the malt extract adds a bit of nice flavour to the cookie, but it is more sugar, and may be hard to find (I got mine from a store selling stuff to brew beer), so it's fine to leave it out.

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The story behind the recipe:

I offered to make lactation cookies for a pregnant friend, as this recipe came up in my RSS feed and I had it bookmarked: https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2019/09/lactation-cookie-recipe.html. Said friend accepted my offer, but revealed that she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes last year (which I didn't know, as COVID-19 lockdown has meant we haven't seen each other in a long time. Not that it would have stopped me from offering). Never having made cookies for a diabetic before, I tried to adapt the original recipe and try to cut down on the sugar. 

I halved the original recipe to give myself more attempts at it. This is one of the attempts that tasted good enough for me to want to eat more than one. As I mentioned in the disclaimer above, I don't know if they are suitable for diabetics. My friend has tried a cookie and she seems OK. Baby seems OK, too.