Oatmeal cookies!

One resource I couldn't live without is a recipe analyzer.  I'm sure there are plenty out there, but I use this one.  You enter the ingredients and how many servings you expect to reap from the recipe and voila!  It kicks out a nutrition label for your recipe. It's been a great tool for trying new recipes at home. I made a great pumpkin loaf with vanilla yogurt and my great grandma's oatmeal cookies. (Yeah, I've been craving some sweets lately!)  

One reason I've experimented with sweets is that I've been on the hunt for Real Food alternatives to Big Food / Diet Industry snacks. Main gripes with so many of these cookies and bars:

• Don't have all that fewer calories
• Taste like chemically-flavored cardboard
• Contain dozens of unrecognizable and/or unpronounceable ingredients
• Shelf life of centuries

The only one I've made some peace with is Luna. Usually 180 calories. I like the Peppermint Stick ones once in a while. But I was looking at my oatmeal cookie recipe and admiring its mere 5 simple, staple ingredients. And using the recipe analyzer (I picture a sci-fi type laser ray probing the cookie dough, abbracadabra!) I discovered each cookie has less than 100 calories and some fiber.  No, it's not an apple, but I stuck the finished cookies in the freezer and having a couple as a snack has made me feel very satisfied. Mmm, I made these...and I didn't use any molybdenum glycinate.  I realize some people can't have cookies, even frozen ones, in stock.  Actually, I am that person, but for some reason, perhaps because I was armed with the caloric "damage" information and knew I had made them as a homemade treat for myself, I didn't go overboard.

As a favor to my mother, for my initial foray, I made the recipe "as is" - no crazy yogurt or applesauce substitutions.  Which means there's a lot of sugar in these suckers.  And I'm ok with that for the most part.  However, I would like to experiment more with some healthy substitutions, just so long as the integrity of the recipe isn't completely compromised. (For example, I don't want to repeat the Great Spaghetti Squash Switcheroo of my WW days.  That's NOT spaghetti. I'm not fooled and now I hate life. I like squash enough, but I like pasta, too. Alright, I've managed to refind my will to live....)  

So if anyone knows about subbing out ingredients in baking, please drop me a line.  Is applesauce generally a sub for butter? Or sugar? And yogurt? I would like to take a recipe I know I like and maybe sub out 1/2 of a less healthy ingredient (sugar) with a better choice and see how that comes out. It will likely take some experimentation, I suppose.