2015-03-12 - Morning Pep Coconut Flour - 0003 [flickr]

7 Healthy Flour Substitutes When Making Cookies

Making healthy cookies without wheat flour may be much easier than people may think.

To create healthy cookies, first look at what’s on hand in your own kitchen. You may have healthier ingredients available and not realize it. Use this substitution tips to help you to choose the right gluten-free ingredients:

1. Corn flour

This flour makes an excellent addition to gluten-free flour mixes. It has no taste and it is dense, which makes it a perfect alternative to white flour. You only need a half amount of corn flour as you would regular wheat flour in a recipe. Besides being a tasty ingredient in recipes and containing many good nutrients, such as magnesium and iron, vitamin A, cooking with corn flour can offer benefits to your digestive system and other health problems.

2. Rice flour

It’s cheap, easy to make, and easy to use. For all of these reasons, it is the most commonly used gluten-free flour. You can find it in white, brown, and sweet editions. If you find that you have trouble with grittiness, try using less rice flour, or grind it to a finer consistency.

3. Millet flour

It is healthy and contains amino acids and very easy to digest. In baked foods it prevents crumbliness. Just make sure you mix it with something like rice flour, because of its strong nutty taste it may overpower the rest ingredients. You should also know that millet flour spoils more quickly than other gluten-free flours, so avoid buying it in bulk.

4. Almond flour

Almonds can also be used to make wholesome and tasty flour that can be substituted for white flour in almost any dish. It is perfect for coating foods instead of breadcrumbs, and it has many valuable nutrients. You can use it to bake; replace up to one-quarter of the flour in the recipe. Almond flour works very well for practically all cookies and muffin recipes, pancakes and many more cake recipes, too.

5. Quinoa flour

This gluten-free flour is made by grinding the quinoa grains into a fine powder. This flour can be used in almost all recipes where needs to replace wheat flour, or in combination with gluten free flour. The foods made with quinoa flour are very delicious and contain high protein content.

6. Coconut flour

Because it’s not only gluten-free but also has low glycemic index, is low in carbohydrate and high in fiber, coconut flour is becoming a favorite substitute flour of many people on restricted diets. It is lighter than almond flour, which makes it very good especially for bread, muffins, and cakes. You can replace just a smaller amount of flour or look up a recipe that uses only coconut flour.

7. Soy flour

Soy flour contains the high-quality soy protein, dietary fiber, and all important nutrients. This flour provides a good source of iron, B vitamins and potassium. Full-fat and low-fat soy flours work best in sweet, rich, baked goods like quick bread, soft yeast bread and cookies. In these recipes, soy flour will substitute well for ten to 30 percent of the wheat or rice flour. This flower improves taste and texture of many common foods and often reduces the fat.