Diet Cinnamon Cookies and My Cooking Workshops

This month, I took a break from my cooking workshops.

I wanted to refresh myself and rest a bit before opening the autumn workshops that I'm starting right after the holidays.

And, let's be honest, hardly anyone stays in the country during this time, and those who do aren't exactly thinking about how to maintain their six-pack right now.

I used this month to rest, renovate the blog a bit, do a lot of sports (because "after the holidays" is right around the corner), and of course, cook and bake.

What to bake, you ask?

I decided to bake super easy cinnamon cookies using Filo dough.

For those who don't know, Filo dough comes ready-made and frozen. It contains no fat at all and can be a great fit for times when we want to maintain a negative or balanced caloric intake.

I admit, I used to think Filo dough was full of trans fats and had nothing to do with health, but that's a common misconception.

Filo dough is paper-thin dough without added fats or unhealthy ingredients, and you can create incredibly healthy and diet-friendly pastries from it, like these diet cinnamon cookies.

These cookies are very easy to make, very crispy, and have an intoxicating scent and taste of cinnamon.

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How to eat them?

A cinnamon cookie can serve as an energy snack before intense endurance activity like a long run or a bike ride, thanks to the sugar and white flour which are absorbed quickly and easily.

Or just when you feel like something sweet with your afternoon coffee.

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Nutritional values by Noam Bachar, clinical dietitian and fitness coach Noam Bachar

One cookie out of 30 contains:

80 kcal

2g protein

1g fat

16g carbohydrates

A bit about the recipe

In Filo dough recipes, it's common to grease the dry dough very thoroughly with plenty of oil so it doesn't dry out.

For myself, I prepared cookies with no oil at all; though the next day they were slightly dry, they were still very tasty, and I managed to save 30 kcal.

In this recipe, I added a total of 3 tbsp of oil to make the cookies juicier and more tender.

It's your choice.

I used brown Demerara sugar for its volume; you can also use coconut sugar which has a slightly nutty flavor.

Diet Cinnamon Cookies

Prep Time 5 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 25 minutes

Servings 30 cookies

Ingredients

• 1 defrosted Filo dough 500g
• 9 tbsp brown sugar or coconut sugar
• 6 tbsp cinnamon powder
• 3 tbsp canola oil
• 3 tbsp soy milk unsweetened

Instructions

1. Remove the dough from the package and spread it out on the counter.
2. Take 4-5 sheets of dough and separate them from the pile.
3. Sprinkle 3 tbsp of sugar and 2 tbsp of cinnamon evenly over the 4-5 sheets you separated. Apply only to the top sheet of the dough (not to each sheet individually). It's important to distribute it evenly, otherwise the cookies won't be uniform.
   
4. Roll the dough up until the halfway point.
   
5. Then roll from the other side until they meet in the middle. Set aside.
   
6. Repeat the process with the remaining dough until you have 3 logs of rolled dough.
7. Slice each dough log into 10 equal pieces.
   
8. Preheat oven to 180°C.
9. Place each cookie on a baking tray.
   
10. In a small bowl, mix the oil and soy milk and brush each cookie with a little bit of the mixture.
11. Bake for about 10-12 minutes.
12. Then remove, flip the cookies over, and bake for another 3-5 minutes until the sugar coats the cookie on all sides and the dough turns golden brown.
    
13. Stays delicious for about a month in a well-sealed jar.