Sunday, April 27, 2008

Peanut Butter Cookies

So I put on my thinking cap to make a healthy alternative to one of my favorite sweets, the peanut butter cookie. The typical cookie is too high in processed sugars and trans fats, so I had to replace some of the ingredients with "healthy" alternatives. Here is what I came up with:

PPB (Protein Peanut Butter) Chocolate Chip Cookies
1/2 cup 100% Dark Chocolate Chips
1 Cup Organic Natural Peanut Butter
5 Scoops of Vanilla Protein Powder (a whey, or milk protein blend works here)
3 TBSP Olive Oil
2 Whole Omega-3 Eggs

Preheat oven to 350F. Combine the peanut butter and eggs until you have a soupy mixture. Add the chocolate chips. Then little by little add the protein powder and when the mixture dries out add in the olive oil. The mixture will be pretty dry at the end so forming them into cookies will be difficult. I combated that by putting the mixture into muffin cups and pressing the mixture into each. I formed them into 6 large cookies. Cook 'em for 18 minutes, let them cool and sink your teeth into a crumbly peanut buttery piece of heaven.



Lets talk a bit about the ingredients:

Chocolate is usually off limits for anyone eating healthy. I say it's pretty ridiculous to eliminate chocolate, because frankly it isn't the chocolates fault that we've dressed it up with trans fats and sugar and designed this thing called milk chocolate. Dark Chocolate in its pure form has great properties for the body including a host of antioxidant polphenols.

Peanut butter
while in the typical store bought variety is loaded with added sugars and trans fats. Thats why I used a natural peanut butter which contains a whopping one ingredient...peanuts. There is nothing wrong with peanuts, it's a healthy fat, the only issue is that you can eat too many of them and it's high in calories...so as long as you are watching your portions peanuts are great.

Olive Oil has a host of benefits that you should probably be aware of at this point unless you live under a rock.

Omega-3 eggs are from chickens fed a diet high in flax seed which allows for the fat content of the egg to contain higher amounts of omega-3s. Omega 3's are linked to weight loss, heart health, anti-cancer, better skin, and the list goes on. Eggs are also a good source of protein.

The milk protein blend gives this cookie a blast of protein and a bit of sweetness from the vanilla flavoring.

I've decided to enter my cookie into a contest. We'll see how it goes.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Tasty and healthy? Love it. Thanks for participating in our first event for The Great Peanut Butter Exhibition.