How to reduce sugar in chocolate chip cookies without losing the texture I have my chocolate chip cookie recipe which uses a 1 to 1 sugar to flour ratio. The texture is chewy because I under-cook them on purpose. When cooked golden brown they are snappy like the supermarket chocolate chip cookies. (like pepperidge farm)

I'm trying to reduce the sugar in this recipe for taste and health reason. (I know that chocolate chip cookies are not celery and carrots :D )

I reduced the sugar to reach a ratio of 75% sugar to flour ratio. The cookies need more cooking time, and come out bready/cakey.

Here is the final low-sugar recipe for reference (my original recipe is based on the one on the back of the Tollhouse chocolate chip packages):


250g butter
110g granulated sugar
100g brown sugar
1 pack vanilla sugar
2 eggs
1 pack of baking soda
1 pinch of salt
270g flour
300g chocolate chips
Bake 12 minutes at 190°C


My understanding is that the sugar contributes to some kind of caramelization of the cookie, making it chewy/snappy.

Is there a way to substitute the sugar? Change the ingredients ratio so that we still have a not-too-sweet and not-too-unhealthy cookie?
You can toast your sugar. Stella Parks on Serious Eats and in her cookbook Bravetart explains that toasted sugar undergoes thermal decomposition that make a more complex, less sweet flavor and (importantly to your question) is lower in the glycemic index: 


  Not only does toasted sugar taste less sweet, it has less sucrose, fewer calories, and a lower glycemic index than plain sugar. How much lower would depend on the extent of thermal decomposition


Toast sugar by putting white sugar on a baking sheet in the oven at 300&deg;F for one to five hours. Stir occasionally. You will likely need to place the resulting toasted sugar mass in a food processor to break it up. It can be used 1:1 for the sugar in the original recipe.