Reduced Fat | Chocolate Chocolate Raspberry Cookies

A little while ago I bought these chips at the super market. Chocolate Raspberry Chips. Freaking Yum. Now I realize that the raspberry flavor is completely manufactured and has not one iota of natural flavoring, but they still rocked! I envisioned making biscotti with these, but last night I was in the mood for chocolate chip cookies, and not to completely abandon the whole "healthy baking" request of CB, I decided to replace half of the butter with equal parts applesauce to reduce the fat. I was a little leery of doing this thinking that the cookies wouldn't spread correctly, or just generally wouldn't take the correct shape, but that was all for not, because they behaved just great in the oven and came out ooey and cakey and good.

I cribbed this recipe from one I found on All Recipes posted by a woman named Kathy Brandt. Her recipe didn't reduce the amount of butter, but I liked how simple it was, so went with her recipe with minor additions and reductions.

Recipe:
1/2 C butter softened
1/2 C applesauce
1 1/2 C sugar
2 eggs
2 C flour
2/3 C cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 C chocolate raspberry chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

2. In large bowl, beat butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt; stir into the butter mixture until well blended. Mix in the chocolate chips and walnuts. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.

3. Bake for 12 minutes in the preheated oven, or just until set. Cool slightly on the cookie sheets before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

Despite reducing the fat by half these cookies were surprisingly rich and chewy, something that I thought would have been comprimised by cutting the butter by half; but it wasn't. I will definitely be experimenting more with applesauce as a subsititute for butter.

Rating = So Damn Good