Butterless Chocolate Chip Cookies

Everyone loves a good chocolate chip cookie. But there is soooo much butter in them that the energy and fat content are through the roof. As I was sitting in a seminar this afternoon (that was completely over my head so it was hard to concentrate) I was thinking about how I could make some choc chip cookies, healthy style.

I was pretty nervous about completely inventing a baking recipe. It's one thing to create a breakfast, lunch, or dinner recipe but baking is all about correct volumes and measures. Had no idea how this was going to turn out. 

This is what I came up with. No butter. Reduced sugar. Surprisingly delicious. Seriously, they turned out soooo much better than I could have ever imaged. Think I prefer these to normal, butter containing cookies! YAY!

My handsome taste tester and everyone in the office approved =)

Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes 25 cookies

180 g apple sauce (I used Barkers Apple Sauce)
3/4 Cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 1/4 Cup plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
200 g dark chocolate chips (I used Cadbury Dark Chocolate Baking Chips)

1. Preheat oven to 180°C and line a couple of baking trays with baking paper (if you just have one tray just cook in a couple of batches).

2.  Place the apple sauce and sugar in a large bowl and mix thoroughly. Stir in the egg and vanilla.

3.  Sift the flour and baking powder over the sugar mixture, add the chocolate chips and mix well to combine.

4. Scoop out tablespoon volumes of mixture, roll into balls, press down slightly and place on baking tray.

5. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes.

Nutritional information per cookie

Calories 115
Carbs    20 g
Protein   2 g
Fat        3 g

(I also calculated what the info would have been with butter instead of apple sauce: 170 calories, 9 g of fat per cookie!)