Everyone loves having peanut butter for holiday treats, and while peanut butter on its own is good for you, cookies that use peanut butter often have a lot of butter, sugar, and other ingredients that don’t make them the healthiest option. The following peanut butter cookie recipes still use some of these traditional ingredients, but they have a few variations to make the cookies lighter.
No-Bake Peanut Butter Balls
These cookies are going to seem like they have some fattening ingredients, but you can control the nutrition in a couple different ways. First of all, they are balls, which means you are controlling how big each one is. Make them a little smaller, so that family members grab just one or two, and don’t end up eating as much as if the balls were a bigger size. You can also use natural, unsalted peanut butter instead of jarred peanut butter, and use a bran cereal instead if crisped rice cereal. Finally, consider using dark chocolate chips instead of semisweet. You will combine the peanut butter, butter, powdered sugar, cereal, and chocolate chips together.
Healthier Peanut Butter Fudge
Did you know you can still enjoy some fudge during the holidays? You definitely can with this alternative recipe, as long as you also watch your portion sizes. This fudge uses peanut butter and cream cheese, making it creamy, but not as fattening as pure chocolate fudge. Use unsweetened and unsalted peanut butter, vanilla extract, fat-free cream cheese, butter or olive oil, Stevia powder, and whey protein to make your low-fat peanut butter fudge.
Peanut Butter Cookies
These peanut butter cookies give you the traditional cookies, but the ingredients will cut the fat and calories a bit. Start with reduced-fat peanut butter, or make your own, then include all-purpose flour, baking soda, salt, butter, and granulated sugar. You also want to use light brown sugar to cut the calories even more, and use an egg white instead of the full egg. Add a little vanilla extract and non-fat milk. After combining these ingredients, you can make small cookie balls, flatten them on the pan with a fork, then bake them just as you would any other peanut butter cookies.
As you can see from this recipe, you are still using real peanut butter to make some delicious Christmas cookies, but changing up some of the ingredients to make them a little healthier.
