I kind of knew better. I pinned these cookies a while back, but I’ve been avoiding them. Why? Because there are 18 tablespoons of butter in the cookie and the frosting combined. Ay-yi-yi!
Before I had to give up gluten, my favorite recipe source was Cooking Light. I like to eat good food, but I prefer it to be the healthier version of that food when possible.
What I’ve found with many gluten-free recipes is that they retain the tasty nature of wheat by dosing the wheat-less version with plenty of sugar. Or butter, in this case. Whatever flour you use is going to taste darn good when paired with lots of chocolate chips or other tempting ingredients.
And that’s fine. There are many people who bake up delicious stuff that would never ever appear in Cooking Light. The food tastes great and everyone should indulge sometimes.
I guess, though, that I’m on the hunt for the gluten-free version of my favorite magazine. And I haven’t yet found it. I did discover some other GF bakers/chefs who have blogs and are focused more on creating more healthful options, but some of the ingredient lists on those are enormous – and intimidating.
I really don’t mean to demonize these cookies. They’re sugar cookies with icing. A typical holiday treat. And they’re darn good. I just think next time around I’m going to try to find a lighter version. Because it’s amazingly hard to resist eating the extra frosting when it tastes so yummy!