Make (Almost) Any Cookie or Treat Brain-Healthier with These Tips
Strategic ingredient swaps + Double Chocolate Pistachio Biscotti
Hello, everyone. I am just getting back from spending Thanksgiving in New York City. My week was filled with quintessential New York things: chilly walks in Central Park, coffee dates with friends, and some of the best Italian food in the U.S. Best of all, I got to spend time with my 24-year old son. I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving week.
Today we are talking about smart swaps for your holiday baking. Nostalgic treats call to us this time of year. In my family, for instance, it just wouldn’t be Christmas without stacks of anise-flavored pizzelle, at least one show-stopping tiramisu, and three different types of biscotti. (Check out the brain-healthy twists in my favorite chocolate pistachio biscotti, recipe below!) But given all that we’ve all learned about how food impacts brain health, a whole month of indulging in foods that are sugary and high in saturated fat isn’t a great idea.
If you’ve ever reduced the sugar in a cookie recipe and ended up with hockey pucks, you know that recipe adjustments don’t always work out. I am here to help!
I’ve done a lot of recipe tweaking over the years, getting a feel for what works and what doesn’t. I am happy to report that there are many small changes that make your food better for you without sacrificing deliciousness. Other recipes, like my mom’s Upside Down Rum Cake? Well, those should probably be left as is and enjoyed on special occasions.
The first newsletter of the month is always free. Please share!
5 things to know before we head into the kitchen
Why small ingredient swaps matter. Tweaking favorite recipes to make them brain-healthier is a fine example of a small but impactful habit. Just look at the data on the power of swapping small amounts of extra-virgin olive oil instead of butter, below. If you’ve learned anything here on BHK, it’s that adopting small positive adjustments in how you eat and live can alter the trajectory of your brain health. The key is to be consistent. And, not falling into the perfection trap.
Brain-healthy eating doesn’t have to be perfect to protect your cognitive health.
My Golden Rule. Any brain-healthy makeover of a recipe has to be just as good or better than the original. I’ll take one (or two!) of my Chunky Whole-Grain Chocolate Cookies any day over the Toll House cookies I used to love.
Making healthier baked goods requires a lot of trial and error. Instead of giving you all the tips I’ve learned over 15 years of recipe testing in one post, I am breaking it down into small bites. To kick things off, I am sharing how to swap in brain-friendly fats.
Throughout the month, I’ll be rolling out my other top tips for amping up fiber, reducing refined sugar, and boosting baked goods with neuroprotective foods.
Understanding what makes a food brain-healthy will inform all your recipe tweaks. If you’re new here or just need a refresher, review my 4 F’s of Brain-Healthy Food (brain-friendly fats, fiber, flavonoids, and fit.) Remind yourself of the key takeaways from proven brain-protective dietary patterns—Mediterranean, MIND, Green MED and others. All these patterns emphasize:
Plant foods over animal products
Whole foods over ultra-processed ones
Foods with a low glycemic index: low in natural sugars and devoid of added sugar
Meals with a low glycemic load: including a fiber-rich element to mitigate the rise in blood sugar after a meal
Foods rich in flavonoids
Unsaturated fats over saturated ones
Enter your recipe for a BHK makeover! For paying subscribers, I am opening up the comment section to help you revamp one of your favorite recipes. Send me a treasured recipe you wish could be better for you. I’ll choose one recipe this month to give a BHK makeover, just in time for the holidays. See details, below.
6 Ways to Swap in Brain-Friendly Fats
One of the biggest bangs for your buck, health-wise, is to shift the fat profile of a recipe to be more unsaturated than saturated. I refer to unsaturated fats (mono- and polyunsaturated fats) as the “brain-friendly fats.” Find them in foods like olive oil, nuts, avocado, and seeds. A brain-healthy diet is rich in these fats but ideally contains less than 5% saturated fat (like you find in butter and coconut oil) and little or no man-made or trans fats.
The power of small fat swaps: In this landmark study from Walter Willet, MD and his colleagues at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, the impact of swapping in extra-virgin olive oil for more saturated fats was evaluated for over 100,000 participants. The results were remarkable! Replacing just 2½ teaspoons of extra-virgin olive oil daily for the same amount of butter, mayonnaise, full-fat dairy, or other high sat fat cooking oil lowered the risk of:
overall mortality (dying from any cause) by 34%
cancer mortality by 16%
mortality from Alzheimer’s or another neurodegenerative disease by 29%
Oil for butter in cookies, cakes, and quick breads. Full butter-to-oil swaps don’t always work, yielding a baked good that’s too, well, oily. I was able to pull it off successfully (after much trial and error) in recipes like my Strawberry Balsamic Olive Oil Cake and Pumpkin Olive Oil Bread With Blueberries. When you are adapting your own recipe, however, a better approach is to replace some of the butter with olive, avocado or a nut oil. Start small: just by one quarter of the butter for oil and work your way up.
Olive oil for butter in pie dough. Pie dough can usually handle a full butter to olive oil adjustment. I find this works best if working with a whole-grain or nut flour rather than all purpose white flour. (More on flour swaps in the next post.) For example, the dates and nuts pair well with the olive oil in the crust for this Lemony Chia Seed Blueberry Tart and the Maple Oat Crust in my Pumpkin Tahini Pie. My friend Katie Morford created this whole grain olive oil crust using whole wheat pastry flour. It’s my go-to recipe for savory tarts.
Tahini for butter in cookies. Tahini is a sesame seed paste rich in omega-3 fatty acids and monounsaturated fats. When I was testing recipes for my book, I was delighted to discover that tahini can be swapped 1:1 for butter in cookie recipes like classic Toll House Chocolate Chip cookies. Or, use it in combination with olive oil for a full butter swap like in my Chunky Whole-Grain Chocolate Cookie recipe. Be sure to use a natural product without added sugars or oils, and stir well before measuring.
Oil and butter combinations for crisps. Sometimes a recipe will end up too oily if swapping out all of the butter for olive oil. That’s what happened when I was developing the topping for this Wild Blueberry Polenta Crisp. Using a 1:1 combination of butter and olive oil did the trick; it retains its buttery flavor and crispy texture while being significantly lower in saturated fat. I was able to get away with a full olive oil swap in this Blackberry Walnut Breakfast Crisp and the Pear and Ginger Breakfast Crisp in my book.
Avocado for butter in pie dough. Have you tried the avocado dough created by Jamie Oliver and tweaked into empanadas by Susan Spungen of
here on her Substack? I would love to know!Choosing better butter. Sometimes, there is no substitute for using real butter in a recipe. Butter from the milk of grass-fed cows provides more plant-based omega-3 fatty acids than conventional butter. And, because the flavor is more intense and rich, a little goes a long way. I favor unsalted European brands like Plugra and Kerrygold.
RECIPE: DOUBLE CHOCOLATE PISTACHIO BISCOTTI
Traditional-style biscotti have neither olive oil or butter in the dough. Instead, they get their fat element from the nuts. Not only does this make for a light cookie, they tend to stay crisp longer—up to 3 weeks if kept in an airtight container. Using almond flour instead of all-purpose white flour works beautifully here, adding protein, nutrient density, and more monounsaturated fats.
Makes 45 to 50 cookies
Ingredients:
2 cups almond flour, plus more to dust the cutting board
¾ cup natural cacao powder
¾ teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon kosher salt
3 large eggs, at room temperature
¾ cup coconut palm sugar
2 teaspoons water
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup raw pistachios, toasted
½ cup dark chocolate chips
For the glaze:
½ cup dark chocolate chips
1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375ºF with a rack set in the center position. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cacao powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a standing mixer, beat together the eggs, sugar, water, and vanilla and almond extracts. Gradually add the dry ingredients until no streaks of flour remain. Fold in the nuts and ½ cup chocolate chips until evenly distributed.
Dust your work surface with flour and divide the dough into two equal balls. The dough will be sticky so dust your hands with flour, too. Flatten each half of dough out into a rectangular log that is 10 inches long, 2 ½ inches wide, and 1 inch tall. Transfer the logs to the baking sheet, reshape if needed, and bake until the dough is lightly browned, with cracks on the surface, and springy to the touch, 20 to 25 minutes. Set aside until completely cool, about 15 to 30 minutes depending on the temperature of your kitchen. Reduce the oven temperature to 300ºF.
Carefully transfer the logs to a cutting board. Use a serrated knife to slice the cookies straight up and down, about ½-inch thick. Transfer the cookie slices back to the baking sheet and place them standing up. (You can crowd all the cookies onto the same pan as pictured or use an additional baking sheet.) Bake until the biscotti are dry to the touch and no longer springy, 25 to 35 minutes.
While the biscotti cool, make the chocolate glaze. Place the chocolate chips in a heat-proof bowl over a small pot of boiling water, making sure the water doesn’t touch the bottom of the bowl. When the chocolate is melted, whisk in the olive oil until you have a smooth glaze. Drizzle over the cooled biscotti and let sit until the glaze has set.
To store, keep in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks.
Enter to have your recipe chosen for a BHK makeover
Paying Subscribers and Founding Members: I invite you to share your most treasured holiday recipe that you wish could be better for you. Don’t copy and paste the entire recipe into the comment section. Instead, in just a few sentences (3 maximum!), tell me the recipe title, the gist of what's in it, and why it’s important to you. If I choose your recipe for a makeover, I’ll send you a message on Substack for the full recipe.
Plus, if you have any successful baking ingredients swaps (let’s stick to brain-friendly fats), I know we’d all love to hear your secrets.
That’s all for today. Next time I’ll share what I’ve learned about baking with nutrient-dense flours to amp up the flavor and fiber in your cookies and cakes. Happy baking, everyone!
Love,
Annie
Brain Health Retreat Update: There is just one spot left in the Brain Health, Food, and Fun Retreat in Puglia Italy, April 27 to May 3, 2025. I could *maybe* squeeze in an additional person if you want to join with a friend. If you have your heart set on this one, be sure to act quickly. Learn more and sign up here.
A family holiday favorite is Chocolate Gingersnaps, which are featuring brain-healthy fresh minced ginger, cocoa, and chopped dark chocolate but...the dough base is butter and brown sugar creamed together. I would love a healthier version of this delicious treat. I can't wait to try your biscotti. Thank you.
I used to make a shortbread cookie dough - 3/4 of the dough pressed into a 8x8 baking dish and par bake…top with a seasonal fruit pie filling and crumbled the remaining dough atop bake for 20 mins. I haven’t made it because the butter, sugar needed for the dough….is a brain health stop sign!