Due to modern medicines ability to increase overall human lifespan and the amazing effects of the western diet, the number of diabetics on my holiday baking list has gone from one to 9 in the past decade. This year I made only one batch of regular, heavily sugared oatmeal cookies and attempted to make shortbread for the first time. Shortbread is apparently flour held together with butter and enough sugar to make it easy to choke down. Giddy with success in this, I attempted to make a low-cholesterol, diabetic friendly version of shortbread using Becel and stevia. No, I wasn’t drunk, I actually thought this would work. Perhaps a lower Becel content and some stevia that wasn’t past date would have been successful, but as it was I put it in the bucket of Epic Fail.
Onward to the orthopedic cookies. Diabetes sucks enough all on it’s own, there’s no reason to my mind why cookies should be forbidden outright. I can no longer find the recipe I started with some years back, not even by consulting the oracle of Google using ingredients recalled as essential at one time. Previous attempts to re-create said recipe have resulted in pucks vaguely tasting like orange flavored mostly dry carpenters glue. Tonight was successful though, so I’ve (for the first time ever) written down what I think I just did.
The thing that makes these diabetic cookies is that they have very little direct sugar, almost no indirect sugar and no animal fat. I suppose they’re vegan too, but I don’t want to hold you back from putting honey in it.
About 2 cups flour
Handful brown sugar
Tspn baking soda
Dollop sugar free vanilla yogurt
Tspn powdered ginger
Few shakes cinnamon
¼ cup melted Becel
6 packets Now brand stevia
2-3 heaping tbsp marmalade
Likely another cook - a real cook, for instance - would put things in a certain order or something, but I really can’t remember that. You should put the stevia packets in the Becel after heating though, it mixes best in hot fluids. Mix all this stuff up together in a bowl and then place spoonfuls of it on either parchment paper or silicon baking sheets – another way to reduce fat content and allow you to have another cookie. Bake it for about 5-12 min (I wasn’t paying that close attention here) at 350 degrees. Keep an eye on them – when they start to brown around the edges, even slightly, they are totally done. Take them out before they burn. If they taste like glue, you’ve done something horribly wrong.
