Traditional Holiday Recipes with a Twist

I recently took on a challenge from Stonyfield Organic Yogurtto take one my traditional holiday recipes and transform it into a more nutrient dense dish by substituting yogurt for commonly used ingredients like butter, oil, sour cream, mayonnaise and heavy cream. While I don't often try substitutions to reduce calories or fat, I do like the idea of a substitution that increases the nutritional value of a dish. Adding greek yogurt in the place of sour cream or evaporated milk, as I did in my recipes, increases the protein content. Not to mention that yogurt is packed with calcium, vitamins D, B2 and B12, potassium and magnesium.

I used the substitution guidelines provided by Stonyfield to alter my recipes:

I tested out my substations on two recipes a Maple Pumpkin Pie and my Mom's Classic Sugar Cookies and was quite pleased with the results.

The texture of Maple Pumpkin Pie was exactly what you would expect of a pumping pie, smooth and creamy. The taste was very similar to a classic pumpkin pie with a slight tang of yogurt, although our friends, who were over for dinner that evening said they couldn't detect the difference. And substituting Stonyfield Greek Yogurt for evaporated milk increased the recipes total protein content by 30 grams.

Maple Pumpkin Pie

1/3 cup brown sugar

2/3 cup maple syrup

2 eggs

1 can pumpkin puree

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ginger

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp clove

12 oz Stonyfield Organic Greek Yogurt (in place of 12 oz. evaporated milk)*

Preheat Oven to 425

1. Combine brown sugar, maple syrup, eggs and pumpkin. Mix well. Add spices until well mixed. Fold in Stonyfield Organic Greek Yogurt.

2. Pour into pre-made or homemade pie shell.

3. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then reduce to 350 and bake and additional 40-50 minutes until knife inserted in pie comes out clean.

* 12 oz of Stonyfield Greek Yogurt contains 34 grams of protein. 12 oz of evaporated milk contains 4 gramps of protein.

The sugar cookies came out almost exactly as they would have following the traditional recipe. In fact my husband couldn't detect the difference. The texture and taste was exactly the same. Making and decorating cookies are a fantastic activity to do with your little ones. My three year old daughter, Sophia loved helping mix, roll out and cut our cookies!

Flour from Vermont, butter from Maine and yogurt from New Hampshire!

Classic Sugar Cookie

4 cups of flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 stick butter softened and 1/2 cup Stonyfield Organic Greek Yogurt (in the place of one cup/two sticks of butter)**

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 egg

1/2 Stonyfield Organic Greek Yogurt (in the place of 1/2 sour cream)**

1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Combine dry ingredients: flour, baking powder and soda, salt, and nutmeg.

2. Cream together butter, sugar and 1/2 cup Stonyfield Organic Greek Yogurt and egg. Then add additional 1/2 cup of Stonyfield Organic Greek Yogurt and vanilla extract. Gradually add dry mixture until stiff dough is formed.

3. Form into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate several hours or overnight.

4. Roll out dough to 1/4 inch thick, cut with cookie cutters. (The thicker the dough, the fluffier the cookie).

5. Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes. Cool and frost.

**Substituting Stonyfield Greek for butter and sour cream in this recipe reduced the fat content of the entire recipe by 260 grams.

If you're starting to plan your holiday menu consider substituting Stonyfield Greek Yogurt. Use Stonyfield's substation guidelines to alter your recipe and see if anyone notices! And if you try one of these recipes let me know how it turns out!

--Sarah

Disclaimer: I am a Stonyfield Yogetter Blogger and occasionally receive free products. The product used in these recipes was given to me, but the Stonyfield thats in our fridge on a now I purchased on my own because I really like Stonyfield. I like that it is organic. I like that it is made locally in New Hampshire and I like that they support family farms. I like Stonyfield. It's good stuff!

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family, food, recipesSarah CanneyNovember 20, 2013baking, cookies, cooking light, cooking with kids, greek yogurt, healthy cooking, holiday cooking, nurtitionh, organic, pumpkin pie, stonyfield, sugar cookies, yogurt4 Comments