How can I make these cookies less sweet without ruining the texture? I've finally found a snickerdoodle recipe that results in cookies with that perfect "bite": a crispy outside -- not crunchy, but an almost-infinitesimal stiffness that resists your teeth just a little before "letting them in" -- leading to a chewy-soft inside that is neither too chewy nor too soft, but perfectly in between. The cookies also have a perfect balance of cinnamon vs. vanilla: they're snickerdoodles, not cinnamon cookies. (Well, unless you accidentally use the 1/2 tablespoon measure instead of the 1/2 teaspoon. Don't ask me how I know this.) The problem is, the cookies are just too sweet for my taste. They're not so overly sweet that I can't eat them, but every time I do eat one, I find myself wishing it weren't so sweet.

How can I modify this recipe to make the cookies less sweet, without ruining their texture?

Ingredients:


  1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
  1 cup sugar
  1 egg
  1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  1/4 teaspoon salt
  1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
  2 tablespoons milk
  1/4 cup sugar + 1 tablespoon cinnamon for dipping  


The method is the usual: cream butter and sugar, add egg and vanilla, then the dry ingredients, then the milk. Chill 30 minutes, then form into big balls - 1 1/2 inches, dip in the cinnamon sugar, put on parchment- or silpat-lined baking sheet and flatten slightly. Bake at 375&deg;F for 10-12 minutes.

(I followed the recipe almost exactly1, except for substituting 3/4 cups of the AP flour with WWW [white whole wheat] flour.)

1OK, so I followed the recipe almost exactly the second time I made it. The first time, well, let's not talk about that. Stupid capital T vs. lowercase t.
As I'm sure you know, sugar has many functions in baked goods, so replacing it can be tricky. Syrups will make your cookies too moist and just reducing the sugar can change the texture and browning. Sugar alcohols can add sweetness, but they usually don't brown and they can give people "digestive issues". I think your best route will be replace at least some of the sugar in your recipe with a different type of sugar, while keeping the total amount of sugar the same. 

I think your best resource may be a brewing supply store, as they often sell other types of sugar to help control fermentation in beer. Brewing sugar, also called corn sugar, will be easiest to find and it's almost entirely glucose. In your case, granulated glucose will have the advantage of only being about 70-80% as sweet as sucrose. If this reduces the sweetness too much, you can try blending the granulated glucose with regular sugar. There are other sugars that are even less sweet, like maltose or lactose, that could be used to replace some of the regular sugar in the recipe, but they can be harder to find.

For reference, here is a chart of the relative sweetness of various sugars and sweeteners.