Eating a nutritious real food diet shouldn’t mean you don’t ever enjoy any fun treats!  It’s totally possible to bake whole food cookies and other delicious, healthy desserts!

A lot of our recipes started out as “classic” (read: not-whole-food) recipes and we adapted them along the way.  For that reason, some of our recipes are partly whole food (in most cases, whole grain but with processed sugar).  Others are wholly real food.  I’ve broken them down into sections so you can easily navigate based on how healthy you want to go.

Whole Food Cookies

These cookies are made with whole grains or similar “complete” ingredients and natural sweeteners, like honey and maple syrup.  (I use stevia in some things — ‘though rarely in baking — but I don’t use sugar alcohols.)

• Paleo Cookies (GF) – Similar to a sugar cookie, these are sweetened with maple syrup.  They’re gluten-free, grain-free, egg-free, & (optionally) dairy-free, but they rely on almond flour, so they do contain nuts.  There are a couple variations.
• Honey Cookies – These are also somewhat similar to sugar cookies.  We use them to make jam thumbprints and cutout cookies.  Uses soft wheat flour.

When I reviewed Embossed Co.’s embossed rolling pins, I used the chocolate version of the paleo cookies, so you can get a look at them there.

Whole Grain Cookies (Almost Real Food)

These cookies are a mixed bag.  A couple of them are sweetened mostly with honey, with just a little brown sugar in the mix.  They’re as close as it gets to “all whole food” without being “perfect.” Most of them use whole grain but are sweetened with sugar.

• Black Hills of South Dakota (GF) – These were created for a state cookie baking contest.  They contain a small amount of brown sugar, and chocolate chips, but are primarily sweetened with honey, and full of whole grains and seeds.  They’re gluten-free if your oats and chocolate chips are.
• GF Chocolate Cookies – Brown rice flour-based, these also contain a small amount of brown sugar and (optional) chocolate (or other) chips, but are primarily honey-sweetened.  Gluten-free unless you use chocolate chips with gluten.
• Chocolate Crinkle Cookies (GF) – These are made with brown rice flour, but sweetened with white sugar and rolled in powdered sugar.  Gluten-free.
• Snowballs (GF) – Snowballs are sweetened with and rolled in powdered sugar, but they call for a very small quantity of sugar as cookies go.  These do contain nuts, and they call for a few unusual ingredients, so be sure you have what you need before you start.  Gluten-free.
• Chocolate Chip Cookies (GF) – These are plain old Toll House chocolate chip cookies, “upgraded” to use whole grain flour.  Obviously, that makes them less than a paragon of nutrition, but they’re more nutritious than the original.  Gluten-free if your oats and chocolate chips are.  (You can also make these with soft whole wheat flour in place of the rice and oat flours, which is the way we made them before I had to go gluten-free.  In my opinion the flavor is better that way.)

I’ve also rounded up a list of links to recipes for “make your own” copycats of traditional Girl Scout cookies, so if you have a hankering for one of those and want to make them from scratch so you can swap in healthier ingredients, that should provide a good starting point.

Other Healthy Desserts (Whole Foods)

Maybe you don’t want cookies, but you’re still interested in tasty, healthy desserts.  I’ve got you covered there, too.

• Paleo Pie Crust (GF) – So far we’ve used this with chocolate custard (not free of sugar), and apple pie filling.  Uses almond flour, so it does have nuts.  Gluten-free, grain-free, egg-free.
• Strawberry Gelatin Salad (GF) – This is an upgrade of one of those conventional gelatin salads.  Nuts and dairy are integral to this recipe.  Sweeteners include date sugar and liquid stevia.  Gluten-free.
• Healthy Snow Cream (GF) – Snow cream with stevia instead of sugar.
• Maple-Apple Crisp (GF) – This is sweetened with maple sugar and optional maple syrup.  Optionally gluten-free if your oats are gluten-free.

Almost Whole Food Desserts

As is the case with the cookie recipes, some of our other dessert recipes are a middle-of-the-road option, partly upgraded but still reliant on processed sugar.

• Gluten-Free Chocolate Cake (GF) – This cake uses black beans in place of flour.  (And no, it’s not gross!)  Sweetened with sugar.  Gluten-free.
• Healthy Flag Cake – This is another version of gelatin salad.  It’s pretty simple to make if your pound cake is already prepared, but you’ll likely have to make your own pound cake if you want it to be healthy.  (Pound cake recipe included; contains sugar.)
• Cheesecake (GF) – Cheesecake is our family’s most-requested birthday dessert.  There’s nothing “special” about this cheesecake; it’s just a standard cheesecake.  But cheesecake inherently is all whole foods, apart from the sugar.  This is not gluten-free as written, but the only gluten is in the graham cracker crumbs for the crust, so if you swap those out for gluten-free graham crackers or cookies (or substitute a nut crust), it is.