There are a lot of pumpkin cookie recipes on Cookie Madness because everyone likes a different style, and that includes sugar-free! These happen to be "almost" sugar-free pumpkin cookies. They are lower in sugar thanks to some of the better tasting alternative sweeteners, and high in fiber when made with Fiber Gourmet flour blend.
Making healthy-ish, good tasting sugar-free pumpkin cookies was easier than I thought. I started with my Kroger copycat pumpkin cookie recipe, swapping the sugar for various sweeteners to identify the best. To lower the calories even more, I used Fiber Gourmet, a high fiber flour blend. Each cookie is around 1.3 oz and about 87 calories if you use the full amount of chocolate chips. At least according to My Fitness Pal. Always do your own calculating. I did my best to manually put in ingredients and divide by 16.
Sweeteners For Pumpkin Cookies With Chocolate Chips
It took me a while to post this because I kept testing with different sweeteners. I had a feeling Magic Baker would work the best. Lakanto Monk Fruit and Erythritol Blend was also very good. Allulose alone made the cookies too soft and Truvia Brown had too much of an aftertaste.
- Magic Baker -- This is a blend of erythritol, stevia and allulose, and my overall favorite. The Magic Baker pumpkin cookies bake up thick and cakey without much of an aftertaste at all. Our grocery store sold it for a while, but now I order it.
- Lakanto Monk Fruit and Erythritol Blend -- Tasted great, texture was moist and soft, not much aftertaste. Lakanto allulose blend would probably work well too, but I used the Lakanto Classic.
- Allulose Alone -- Straight allulose locks in moisture so it's almost impossible to make crispy cookies. I'd hoped this would be a benefit for pumpkin cookies, but they spread more and were a little too soft. Freezing the cookies improved the texture somewhat. If using straight allulose, use 1 ⅓ the amount, so about 130 grams.
- Truvia -- The Truvia brown sugar I tested with made the cookies a little dryer and there was a raging cool mouth feel afterward.
- Swerve -- Swerve should work well, but I haven't tested it yet. Cookies will probably be a little dryer with Swerve than with an allulose blend. I'll update when and if I test with Swerve. I generally find it to have an aftertaste, but a lot of people love it.
Fiber Gourmet
Fiber Gourmet has plenty fiber and half the calories of all-purpose flour. If you're not too worried about that or need to make the cookies gluten-free, just use all-purpose flour a gluten-free blend. As for almond flour, if you look closely at the picture you can see that the cookies in the background have a scraggly texture. That's because I tried to substitute almond flour. I had to make a few other changes as well when using almond flour, but the cookies had a macaroon-like texture. Fiber Gourmet is my top pick.
Chocolate Chips
Lily's sugar free semi-sweet style chocolate chips are always a good bet if you want to keep the chips sugar free. I especially like their salted caramel milk chocolate flavor A friend mentioned the allulose sweetened chocolate chips from Trader Joe's are also tasty, and this recipe would be a terrific way to use them. That said, if you or the people you bake for are okay with a little sugar, just use regular dark chocolate chips.
Recipe
Almost Sugar Free Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- ½ cup canned pumpkin (Libby's brand) (130 grams)
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil (grapeseed) (22 grams)
- ½ cup 1:1 sweetener such as Splenda Magic Baker or Lakanto Monk Fruit and Erythritol Blend (100 grams)
- 1 ½ tablespoons molasses (30 grams)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup Fiber Gourmet flour blend or all-purpose flour (130 grams)
- ⅜ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ⅜ teaspoon nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon cloves
- ½ cup regular or sugar free chocolate chips
Instructions
- Fold three paper towels in half, stack them, then spread the ½ cup pumpkin on top and let it stand for about 10 minutes. If you start with 132 grams, you should have a little under 90 grams once drained. May vary among brands.
- Meanwhile, in a microwave-safe mixing bowl, melt the butter. Add sweetener to hot melted butter and stir until shiny.
- Stir the molasses, oil, vanilla and blotted dry pumpkin into the butter mixture.
- Mix the flour, baking soda, salt and spices together, then add flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture. Stir to make a soft dough. Cover bowl and chill for about 30 minutes or until it is cool and thick.
- Add the chocolate chips to the cooled dough. At this point you can shape and bake, or you can shape the dough into balls and keep the cold, portioned, dough balls covered until ready to bake.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Using a medium cookie scoop, scoop up large balls of dough. Try to get an even 16, which should be a scant medium scoop or a heaping small scoop or tablespoon. Arrange on a parchment lined baking sheet spacing 2 inches apart.
- Bake large chilled pumpkin dough balls at 350 degrees F. for about 16 to 18 minutes. This seems like a long time, and you can always check as early as 12, but I've found with pumpkin and alternative sweetener these do take a while to fully bake. You may want to bake a test cookie to nail the time in your oven.
- This is difficult, but let the cookies cool completely before serving. The texture goes from soft to firm but moist and cakey. Store cookies in the freezer to keep them fresh.
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