This recipe is adapted from one by The California Dried Plum Board. The cookies are called Low Fat Chocolate Fudge Cake Cookies, and of course they get their soft texture and some sweetness from dried plums aka prunes. I tried to streamline the recipe by doing it all in one bowl, and I scaled it down from the original a bit because I wasn't sure we'd love them.
I only made these once, but they weren't bad. These days I'd rather just use a little fat in my baking and increase the fiber or lower the sugar. Still, there's a place for low fat and fat free cookies because for some people, fat's just hard to digest.
Old Notes
If you don’t want to deal with fudge filling, you can also make these cookies as drop cookies. Make dough as directed, but add ¼ cup toasted chopped walnuts and ⅓ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips. I made a few of them this way and they were great.
If you do decide to try the filling, my advice is to have all the filling ingredients ready to go, then prepare it in the microwave while the cookies bake. I’ll be interested to hear how these work out for others. They were much better than I expected - -definitely good for a low fat cookie.
Low Fat Chocolate Fudge Cake Cookies
½ cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons prune baby food
1 egg white
1 tablespoon water
½ teaspoon espresso powder
½ teaspoon vanilla
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder, natural
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons all purpose flour (3 ½ oz)
Filling:
1 ounce unsweetened chocolate, cut into chunks
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
2 teaspoons corn syrup
¼ teaspoon cornstarch dissolved in 1 ½ tablespoons water
¼ teaspoon vanilla
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a large cookie sheet with parchment or a Silpat.
In a medium size (2 quart) mixing bowl, using a mixing spoon, mix together sugar and prune baby food. Stir in egg white, water, espresso powder and vanilla. Add cocoa powder and stir until well mixed. Add baking soda and salt and beat with the mixing spoon, taking care that baking soda is well-distributed through mixture (no lumps). Add the flour and stir to make dough.
Shape dough into 14 neat balls about ¾ inch in diamter. Place on ookie sheet, spacing as well as possible to fit all 14 (these don’t spread much) and bake for 10-11 minutes or until cookies appear set.
Remove cookies from oven and immediately press a deep indentation into the center. Spoon filling into indentations, dividing evenly among cookies.
While cookies bake, prepare the filling in microwave.
Microwave Filling:
In a small (1 quart or so) microwave-safe bowl, melt the chocolate in microwave. When chocolate is melted, stir in sugar, corn syrup and dissolved cornstarch/water mixture. Stir well and return to microwave. Microwave for about 40 seconds or until mixture starts to boil. Remove from microwave and stir well. Stir in vanilla.
Makes 14 cookies
Anna says
Hi Christina,
In a lot of cases, applesauce will work. The trick is to take a half cup to a cup, spread it around in a big circle on a stack of paper towels and let it sit for about 20 minutes. The idea behind this is to remove as much was as possible so that you're left with more fruit pectin. Less water means less steam, and steam plays a part in the rubbery texture of fat free baked goods. When you scoop the applesauce up off the towel and measure it again, you'll find you have a smaller yield, as a lot of the water seeped into the towels. So drain it, then measure out only what you need.
Christina says
This recipe looks amazing! I have a question: if you don't have baby food in your house, what could you use as a replacement? Would pureeing whole prunes work as well?
Joe says
I'll toss in a plug for brown rice syrup as a sub, I use it often and it seems to work well. I'll keep these in mind if I'm ever "allowed" to eat chocolate again 😉
Anna says
Hi Lisa,
I think you'll need to use some sort of syrup to get the right fudge consistency. Golden Syrup would work.....maple syrup MIGHT work...honey would probably work well too. It will add honey flavor, but it might be good.
OR, you could just make the dough and throw in a bunch of chocolate and nuts. That version is good too.
Lisa Ernst says
Anna, perfect timing on this recipe -- I was looking for something fun and different to try this weekend, and I have an extra pack of prune puree left from when I made the prune/oat brownies you posted a few months ago. One quesiton: I don't keep corn syrup around the house. Do you think its critical to the filling if I replace it with enough granulated sweetener and liquid?