Can you leave some of the sugar out of cookies?

Anonymous asks: I heard that you can leave out some of the sugar in cookies without ruining them. Is this true and what is the effect on the cookies?

Baking SOS says: Sugar has several functions in baked goods: It tenderizes the product, making it softer; it serves as a “liquid” ingredient because it melts during the baking process, which in turn makes the product spread; and it also caramelizes when baking, giving the product a nice, golden color.

If you reduce the amount of sugar in a cookie recipe, the cookies will tend to be puffier and spread less. They will also be crispier rather than chewy, and they will not brown as much.

If you would like to experiment with reducing the amount of sugar in a recipe, I would suggest you start by reducing the amount by only a few tablespoons (2-4, depending on the amount of sugar called for in the recipe) to see what happens. I always advised my students to make a recipe one time through as it is written before they began experimenting with changing the formula so that they know how the recipe was originally supposed to turn out. Then they could make changes and see which results they prefer.