Low Sugar Cookies

Low sugar cookies genuinely can be delicious and big winners with kids which is great news if you want to slash sugar in your family’s diet.

And I have here a collection of great low sugar cookie recipes including:

• Classic shortbread
• Danish butter cookies
• Chocolate cookies
• Viennese swirls and more …

The recipes all have under 5g of free sugar per cookie which is well below the daily limit for kids and the crazy sugar levels in many cookie recipes!

Crazy Sugar Levels In Popular Cookie Recipes

The top ranking chocolate chip cookie recipe on Google has over 17g of sugar in each cookie!!

That is just about ALL of your kid’s daily free sugar allowance gone in one single everyday snack!!

Daily Free Sugar Limits

• Under 4 : avoid added sugar as much as possible with little kids
• 4-6 : max 20g – 4 teaspoons
• 7-10 : max 25g – 5 teaspoons
• 11-18 : max 30g – 6 teaspoons

And these sugar limits are for ALL free sugar including that found in :

1. Honey
2. Maple syrup
3. Apple puree
4. Fruit juice
5. Cereals
6. Bread
7. Sauces
8. Ice cream
9. Yoghurt etc

So if we give our kids cookies with 20g of sugar they will have sugar issues from sleep and behaviour problems right up to diabetes!!

And swapping out all that sugar for honey, maple syrup or apple puree will barely lower the free sugar load despite what we’ve been told.

To cut your kids sugar high every day whip up low sugar cookies instead and use my tips on chocolate and frosting to keep sugar levels down.

Low Sugar Cookie Index

1. Butter Cookies
2. Danish Butter Cookies
3. Shortbread
4. Viennese Fingers
5. Double Chocolate Cookies
6. Chunky Chocolate Cookies
7. Garibaldis
8. Chocolate Digestives
9. French Sables Bretons
10. Swedish Chocolate Cookies

Butter Cookies

The best simple way to lower sugar in cookies is to increase the butter!! Almost every big cookie baking culture has amazing traditional butter cookie recipes with less than 4 grams of sugar in each cookie.

For quick low sugar butter cookies use this recipe in which you cut rounds from a log of dough rather than rolling out to cut with cutters.

Sugar : 3.1 grams per cookie

Makes : 48

Ingredients : Unsalted butter, granulated sugar, 1 egg yolk, all purpose flour, salt, vanilla extract.

Or with just a little more sugar try these butter cookies covered in sanding sugar for a crisp finish.

Sugar : 3.4 grams per cookie

Makes : 48

Ingredients : Unsalted butter, granulated sugar, sanding sugar (ideal but not essential), 2 egg yolks, all purpose flour, salt, vanilla extract.

Danish Butter Cookies

These Danish butter cookies are made with powdered sugar that gives a soft dough you can pipe into pretty shapes. They are low enough in sugar to leave some of your sugar allowance for a delicious drizzling of glaze frosting or chocolate.

Sugar : 2.8 grams per cookie

Makes : 25

Ingredients : Unsalted butter, powdered / icing sugar, plain flour, cornflour/corn starch, milk, vanilla extract, almond extract.

Shortbread

Sugar : 3.1 grams per cookie

Makes : 18

Ingredients : 6oz / 170g flour, 4oz / 112g unsalted butter, 2oz / 56g sugar.

This is my mother’s classic shortbread recipe now passed onto my daughter. It makes a great everyday snack for kids but with just a drizzle of icing becomes a lovely treat at kids parties.

1. Heat oven to 160c / 325f
2. Combine softened butter & sugar.
3. Mix well but don’t actually cream.
4. Mix in flour to bring together as a dough with as little work as possible (the trick throughout is not to overwork ingredients).
5. Roll dough out to typical thickness of a sugar cookie.
6. Cut out as circles or flours.
7. Transfer to greased baking sheet.
8. Prick with a fork for even baking.
9. Cook for 15 minutes. They should still be pale rather than browned.
10. Transfer to cooling rack.

Viennese Fingers

Viennese fingers are another super pretty traditional butter cookie that’s a big hit for parties and Christmas treats but is still low in sugar.

Sugar : 3.3 grams per cookie plus 0.7g for chocolate drizzle

Makes : 12

Ingredients : Butter, icing sugar, all purpose / plain flour, corn starch / cornflour, chocolate.

Unfortunately butter cream seriously pushes up the sugar load. It would add 16g to each cookie!!

Double Chocolate Cookies

You really can make great tasting, great looking low sugar chocolate cookies and these double chocolate cookies would be goof for Christmas treats or a cookie exchange.

Sugar : 2.8 grams in total with 1.4g per cookie PLUS 1.4g per button

Makes : 70

Ingredients : Unsalted butter, confectioner’s / icing sugar, egg yolk, cake / plain flour, corn starch/flour, cocoa powder, milk, salt, chocolate buttons or chips.

Chunky Chocolate Cookies

For chunky chocolate cookies still low in sugar try this chocolate date cookie recipe which makes use of the rich flavour of dates and coconut oil to offset the low levels of sugar.

Sugar : 3.2 grams per cookie

Makes : 10

Ingredients : Medjool dates, coconut oil, plain or spelt flour, egg, vanilla extract, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, cocoa powder, dark chocolate.

Garibaldis

These Garibaldis are a classic British cookie that’s been around for over 150 years. Made with currants they are deliciously sweet but are low in free sugars kids need to cut down.

Sugar : 2.9 grams per cookie

Makes : 30

Ingredients : Currants, unsalted butter, plain flour, caster sugar, granulated sugar, salt, milk, egg white.

Chocolate Digestives

Chocolate digestives are another absolute classic British biscuit or cookie. This homemade recipe is much better than store bought and with drizzled chocolate comes in at less than 5 grams per cookie.

Sugar : 4.7 grams per cookie with chocolate drizzle

Makes : 12

Ingredients : Oatmeal, wholemeal flour, plain white flour, butter, egg, salt, sugar, bicarb / baking soda, dark chocolate.

French Sablé Bretons

French Sablé Bretons are another traditional low sugar butter cookie recipe popular with kids and adults. They are both sweet and salty and have a lovely egg yolk glaze so don’t need sugary toppings.

Sugar : 5 grams per cookie

Makes : 20

Ingredients : Butter, 3 eggs plus extra yolk, plain flour, sugar, salt.

Swedish Chocolate Cookies

These easy to make chocolate cookies are a traditional Swedish tea time snack that would make a super pretty low sugar Christmas treat.

Sugar : 3.6 grams per cookie + 1 gram for sprinkles

Makes : 60

Ingredients : Butter, plain flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, vanilla extract, 2 eggs, pearl sugar or Demorara sugar

OK, now we’ve got 10 low sugar cookie recipes kids love, let’s look at some more clever baking hacks for cutting kids daily sugar load.

Clever Hacks To Lower Sugar In Cookies

There are a whole bunch of clever ways to lower sugar in cookies that kids really do love :

• Lower Sugar Chocolate
• Lower Sugar Frosting & Icing
• Cut Sugar In Favourite Recipes
• Stop Super Sizing

Lower Sugar Chocolate

Sugar levels vary greatly in baking chocolate with some bars having triple the sugar of others!!

It’s really all down to the % of cocoa in the bar and how dark, therefore, the chocolate is.

To cut sugar you want your kids to little by little eat darker chocolate.

Sugar In Chocolate Bars

Typical sugar levels per 100 g bar :

• 30% cocoa = 51g milk chocolate
• 37% cocoa = 46g
• 60% cocoa = 38g
• 70% cocoa = 29g
• 85% cocoa = 14g very dark

Getting your kids eating 60% chocolate happily is a realistic goal but start by adding a little bit of darker chocolate and week by week up the percentage.

Lower Sugar Frosting & Icing

The simplest way to slash sugar levels in cookie frosting is simply to drizzle glaze frosting or melted chocolate over cookies rather than completely covering them.

Typically you only need 20% as much frosting for drizzling which is an 80% cut in sugar per cookie!!

You can obviously do fancy patterns but random drizzles on butter cookies and shortbread look lovely.

Cut Sugar In Family Faves

You can cut the sugar in family favourite cookie recipes but there is some really science to it.

The sugar doesn’t just impact sweetness, it also effects texture and spread in different ways so you can cut much more sugar in some recipes than in others.

So before you start experimenting check out this guide to how to reduce sugar in cookies.

Stop Super Sizing

This is an obvious way to cut sugar but we have super sized all the sugary things our kids eat including :

• Chocolate bars
• Glasses of juice
• Ice cream helpings
• Cupcakes
• And of course huge cookies.

If you cut the size of your cookies by 5% each week you can rightsize cookies in just 2 months and slash their sugar level by 40% without your kids noticing the change.

And there you go, lots of low sugar cookie recipes and tips to help you cut your kids daily sugar load.

I do hope they help. Let me know which recipes work best for you.

And follow me on Pinterest for more recipe ideas …