I had a small get-together for the last Texans game and assigned my friend Heather the dessert duties. She is known for her sweet-treat talents, so I expected that whatever she came up with would be magic. What I didn't expect was a gridiron battle between two cookie heavyweights.

She brought both a bag of "unhealthy" pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and a bag of "healthy" pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. They are both a twist on a recipe she found on AllRecipes.com, and you can click there if you want all the details. She essentially tweaked this recipe to add more pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice and used one cup of mini-chips instead of two cups of regular chips. For the "healthy" cookies, she took out the ½ cup of vegetable oil and used the same amount of applesauce, reduced the sugar to ¾ cup and subbed two cups of whole wheat pastry flour. We were all very suspicious.

What unfolded shocked us more than the Texans come-from-behind overtime win against the Redskins. Every person that took the blind taste test picked the "healthy" over the "unhealthy." They were moister, slightly cake-like and even had a hint of ginger (though we were told that there was zero ginger included). I know it sounds sacrilegious to have a healthy cookie, but the proof was in the pudding... or the cookie dough, in this case. Touchdown "healthy" pumpkin chocolate chip cookie.