7 Brain-Healthy Mix-Ins For Cookies and Treats
Plus, revamped Pistachio Lemon Snowball Cookies
Hello, everyone. Winter is in full swing here in Jackson. The ermine who live in the woodpile have turned from mink-brown to white with just a tip of black at the tail. The dogs are building tunnels in the snow that connect every door with their favorite trees. And the view outside my kitchen window looks like a charcoal drawing, branches painted with sparkling frost. It’s the perfect day to bake another batch of my new favorite cookie recipe, thanks to our BHK recipe makeover contest.
Today we are talking about the easiest better baking swaps of all—adding in brain-protective foods. This is the last installment of our four-part mini-series on strategic ingredient swaps. If you are just joining us, catch up on the others here:
I am happy to report that the Pistachio Lemon Snowball Cookies makeover was a success!
While the original recipe includes ground pistachios (a good start, as recipe submitter Trudy S noted), the rest of the cookie was mostly white flour, butter, and sugar. I replaced most of the butter by grinding some of the pistachios even longer in the food processor, reduced the sugar, and swapped in extra-virgin olive oil. Snowball cookies need a pretty glaze, so I added just a slight drizzle of a lemon and olive oil frosting. I really love these cookies and will be adding them to my list of must-bake holiday recipes each year. Find the recipe at the end of this post.
The Hershey kiss-topped peanut butter cookies, on the other hand, haven’t turned out as well. I’m using natural peanut butter, wedges of dark chocolate, and replacing the sugar with dates. I still haven’t achieved the soft texture of the classic cookie, but the nostalgic peanut butter/chocolate flavor is spot on. I’ll keep working on these until I get them right!
If you are baking in the next few days leading up to the holidays, I’d love to hear how it’s going. Join me in the Chat I just started about brain-healthy ingredient swaps. I’ll be answering any questions you may have, and you can drop photos there, too. I’d love to see all of your cookies and treats.
7 Brain-Healthy Mix-Ins for Cookies and Treats
As I mentioned above, mix-ins are the easiest swaps of all. That’s because adding in brain-healthy foods can be done without altering much else in the recipe.
These mix-ins follow my Golden Rule for healthy ingredient swaps: Any brain-healthy makeover of a recipe has to be just as good or better than the original.
