Joanne Chang—owner of Flour Bakery, author of Baking with Less Sugar, and all-around dessert wizard—has discovered that less sugar can often mean more flavor.Â
Today, Joanne explains what piqued her interest in low-sugar baking and recreates a favorite cookie recipe using only 6 tablespoons of sugar.Â
I bake because I have an insatiable sweet tooth, because I am fascinated by the alchemy of flour/butter/sugar/eggs, and mostly because I love making people happy with pastries. You instantly become the most popular person in the room when you walk in with a plate of homemade cookies or a frosted layer cake.Â
The person I love to bake for the most is my husband. It was part of our wooing process many years ago: He treated me to ice creams and cupcakes and I answered with homemade pies that we would share on his porch. We are similarly obsessed with all things sweet, and this shared passion was one of the many ways I knew he was the one.
It never occurred to me that his occasional mood swings—upbeat one moment and groggy the next—might be related to our sugar intake. Over the years I've learned the signs: He is full of energy for a short while and then he crashes. When making treats for the one you love leads to less than ideal consequences, you immediately pause to redirect. I decided to see what I could create if I reduced or eliminated white sugar in my baking.
As a pastry chef, I will never call sugar the enemy. It's one of the magical elements in my baking arsenal. However I've now learned that if you limit or remove white sugar from your baking, the happy result is a new spectrum of tastes and pleasures.
The first recipe I wanted to tackle for Christopher was his favorite cookie, Flour's oatmeal raisin. This cookie is a classic: It's full of oats and raisins with just a whiff of cinnamon. It's got some heft and chew, but at the same time, parts of the cookie bake off lacey and caramel-y. It's a study in textures and rich, buttery flavors.Â
Stock your pantry with these 5 natural sugars and kiss the granulated sugar goodbye.
While you'll never exactly replicate the original if you reduce one of its key ingredients—white sugar—you can still bake a cookie that is fully sweet, addictive, and just as good, if not better, than the one made with all of the sugar. The main difference is to adjust your expectations of texture. Sugar is what causes the cookie to be crispy; it turns to caramel in the oven, giving the cookie crunch. This reworked cookie contains 6 tablespoons of white sugar whereas the original contains over 4 times that (26 tablespoons of both white and brown sugar).Â
After making this for the last year or so, I now prefer this one to the full sugar version. We chop about half of the raisins into tiny pieces so that every bite of cookie gets some natural sweetness from the raisins. We up the cinnamon and vanilla—by a lot—and it really makes your tastebuds think sweet without actually needing sugar. Without the sugar you really taste the nutty oats. The raisins. The butter! The walnuts add crunch and the vanilla brings out the warm flavors of the cinnamon. You don't miss the sugar. At all. Try it and tell me what you think.Â
Low Sugar Oatmeal Raisin Cranberry Cookies
Makes 16 to 20 cookies
3/4Â cup (75 grams) walnuts, roughly chopped
16Â tablespoons (2 sticks/225 grams) unsalted butter, melted and completely cooled)
6Â tablespoons (75 grams) granulated sugar
2Â large eggs plus 1Â large egg yolk
2Â teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4Â cup (105 grams) all-purpose flour
1 1/2Â cups (150 grams) old-fashioned rolled oats (not instant or quick-cooking)
1Â teaspoon baking soda
1Â teaspoon kosher salt
1/4Â teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2Â teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4Â cup (120 grams) raisins, about half of them chopped roughly
3/4Â cup (120 grams) dried cranberries
See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.
Last photo by Bobbi Lin; all others by James Ransom
Written by: Joanne Chang
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37 Comments
Artificials are MUCH safer than natural sugars in any form, for those who must avoid sugar. We prefer "yellow sugar" (generic equivalents to splenda) for most purposes, as it can be used in most cooking safely. Sadly, its chemistry doesn't work for cookies :(
1) "White" sugar has nothing to do with it. Any form of sugar, natural or not, must be greatly reduced. That includes honey, brown sugar, fruit sugars of all kinds, etc.
2) Raisins and other dried fruits all contain large amounts of sugars. (By the way, fruit juice is even worse -- basically the same glycemic load as pure sugar.)
3) Rolled oats are better than instant oats not only because of texture. Instant oats have the same glycemic value as table sugar! Key: lots of fiber slows down the sugar rush. (When searching for breads in the grocery, we look for at least twice as much fiber as sugars.)
4) Be careful of database errors. For example, Brown Rice Syrup somehow got a low glycemic index in one online list, which has propagated. However, it's actually pure glucose (in three forms: single, double, and triple-glucose molecules) and has among the highest glycemic values.
Perhaps it would help people to understand that glycemic index/load are not at all theoretical: they are obtained by measuring the blood sugar response of diabetics to each food!
My question is (and I'm sure you've heard it before), can you sub gluten free flour? If so, do you have to change up the butter sitch and do we add xanthan gum? It's always tricky .. I know. But it's tempting. Thank you!
It took a couple of years, but finally, my former sugar addict husband finds all baking but mine and that of our health food store, too sweet.
People, the best plan is to cut out as much sugar as you can, out of your diet, BEFORE actually getting diabetes. It doesnt have to be a drag, like a big sacrifice or punishment.
But once one HAS diabetes, (has worn their pancreas out to the point where it just quits) they don't really have a choice; even one of these cookies will be too much for most diabetics. And not just sugar, but both simple and complex carbs need to be severely monitored. That's really tough, and can seem like punishment.
It's a tragedy what we're doing to ourselves with sugar. Thank you, Joanne Chang, for bringing up the sugar thing.
Don't know anything about their relative merits otherwise as it relates to cookies...
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