Cookies must be sweet, that goes without saying, but these are virtually made mainly from sugar! A nice crunch and the lacey appearance add to the attraction.
I wonder what all those people who believe stevia and co are better for them than sugar would make of these treats.
There is no way you could use erythritol or xylitol instead of the hefty combo of corn syrup and brown sugar. It’s those two that are responsible for the lace pattern the cookies spread and bake into: no substitutes will work like this.
Non sugars don’t work
They don’t work anyway, which I suspected all along and WHO have recently confirmed. They won’t make you slim and might give you diabetes or a heart disease instead.
There really are no magic ingredients that would let you stuff yourself with cream cakes and not put on an ounce around the waist.
All the sugar and/or starch replacements are nasty chemicals that have no place in a human diet.
Plus, once you take out sugar (starch, fat, gluten and so on as it also applies to all the other ‘low in’ or ‘free from’ products), you have to whack in some more artificial emulsifiers, stabilisers, preservatives, colourants and similar crap to give them texture.
And the end product will be so ultra-processed, chock-full of harmful stuff, that a pound of sugar will seem healthier than that.
Desserts are not meant to be healthy
Cakes, biscuits, cookies, chocolate, truffles, puddings, ice cream and pies are not healthy, nor are they supposed to be. True, you can have a piece of fruit for afters, or cheese instead but it won’t be dessert.
Desserts are treats. They are entertainment foods, without any nutritional value. They are constructed for pleasure only, and if you refuse to acknowledge that, you’re deluded.
Does that mean we should not have desserts? Absolutely not.
Food, eating is one of life’s most fundamental pleasures, and it’s certainly healthier to be pleased than miserably virtuous.
As I have always believed, if your diet is balanced overall, a sweet consumed in moderation is going to do no harm at all. And the more naturally it is produced, the better.
And so these homemade cookies, though excessively sweet, will be much better for you than a low-sugar, high-E numbers confection.
How to make the lace cookie dough
This is the wonderfully easy cookie/biscuit making method which is all about melting the sugar and syrup with butter, then stirring hot liquid into the flour-oat mix.
The original recipe calls for corn syrup and white sugar. My version has a lovely butterscotch flavour thanks to brown sugar, and I’ve found that golden syrup works here as well as corn, which is less popular in the UK.
The dough needs to set in the fridge for at least a couple of hours, before it can be scooped with a teaspoon and shaped into walnut sized or smaller balls. Those are then rolled in extra oats, to coat and form a fuzzy outside.
They bake in medium oven for about twelve minutes or less, depending on their size, until deep golden brown. They are supposed to be crunchy rather than chewy-soft so make sure they have a completely dry appearance coming out of the oven.
They will keep for a good few days but best layer them with parchment, otherwise, especially in warm weather, they might meld into one another.
More cookie recipes
Snickerdoodles, butter cookies with a cinnamon coating. Make them with kids so they roll the dough balls in sugared cinnamon like dung beetles.
The ultimate oats and raisin butter cookies, chewy and delicious. Use a mix of jumbo rolled oats and steel-cut, or pinhead oats for the best oatmeal raisin cookies ever.
Condensed milk cookies, the recipe from Nestle is easy and simple. These cookies have white chocolate chips and dried cranberries added in, which is the best combination.