Today I stumbled upon an amazing ingredient "apple butter", which is just a highly concentrated form of applesauce. It is called butter, because it is a spread. If your grocery store sells carries it, you can likely find it near the peanut butter. Apple butter can replace up to 3/4 of regular butter in most baking recipes (muffins, cookies, cakes). Example: if your recipe calls for 1/2 butter, you can use 1/2 apple butter instead. If your recipe calls for 1 cup of butter, you may replace 3/4 cup of butter for apple butter, but you will still need to add the remaining 1/4 cup of butter. If the apple butter is sweetened, you may want to use less sugar.
Ingredients
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup apple butter
2 tbsp butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 cup oats
1/4 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup cran raisins
1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. In a small bowl cover the cran raisins with boiling water and let sit until plump.
2. In separate bowl mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
3. In a large bowl, beat butter, apple butter, and sugar until smooth. Next, beat in the egg and vanilla. Mix in the flour mixture a little at a time. When all combine, stir in the oats, cran raisins, and almonds.
4. Using a spoon, drop the batter into small balls on the baking sheet. Bake in oven for 15 minutes. Let cool and enjoy.
Recipe makes 16 cookies, 130 calories and 1g saturated fat per cookie. If I had of used butter instead of apple butter than the saturated fat content would have been 5g per cookie.
