Time for holiday cookies with Rocco DiSpirito

The holidays are here... and my bathroom scale is getting nervous.

Packing on pounds used to be one of my holiday traditions. That is, it was until I figured out how to put certain holiday foods on a diet. And that is the trick to navigating the holidays in a way that lets you enjoy yourself without scaring your scale.

Holiday cookies are a great example. One typical sugar cookie can weigh in with as many as 150 calories. For perspective — you'd have to shovel snow for 30 minutes to work off a single cookie! And who can stop at just one cookie?

When you put holiday cookies on a diet, it's not just a matter of swapping out all the sugar with artificial sweeteners. In baking cookies, sugar does a lot more than sweeten. It adds volume and it caramelizes. It also makes your cookies moist. Artificial sweeteners can't do that.

In this recipe, I've opted for a natural sugar — palm sugar (also called coconut sugar). Resembling brown sugar, it's made from the sap of palm trees. Palm sugar contains tiny amounts of calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, riboflavin and thiamin, as well as trace amounts of protein. It's widely available in international and natural foods stores.

For a punch of crunch, the flour base is whole-wheat pastry flour. And there's virtually no fat in these cookies. You won't miss it, thanks to a blend of sweet potato and egg whites, which help stretch the butter. And since it is the holidays, we can't leave off the icing (made healthy with fat-free cream cheese).

The result? A typical spice cookie can have 220 calories and 12 grams of fat. Mine has just 2 grams of fat and 55 calories.

Now that is something to feel festive about!

TIPS:

— For best results, bake these cookies on the oven's upper rack.

— For even baking, use clean baking sheets. Brown or burned sheets will affect the browning of the cookies.

— If you prefer, use ground cinnamon instead of the nutmeg and cloves.

HEALTHY HOLIDAY SPICE COOKIES

Start to finish: 30 minutes

Makes 12 cookies

2 tablespoons butter, softened

2 tablespoons unrefined palm sugar or jaggery