Q. I would love for you to take a look at these wonderfully decadent chocolate-chip cookies by Jacques Torres (a chocolate maker). Chocolate-chip cookies are a way of life in our home.

A. Here's the thing about lightening chocolate-chip cookies: If you reduce the fat and sugar too much, it's not a cookie anymore, it's a muffin. I've found over the years of making over cookies, that you can usually only reduce the amount of fat added to make the dough by 33 percent. So if you add the same amount of butter called for (most stick butters and margarine and shortening contribute 12 grams of fat per tablespoon), but use a less-fat margarine (such as Land O Lakes Buttery Taste Spread, with 8 grams fat), it generally works well and cuts the fat added by one-third. I also decreased the sugar a little and substituted whole-wheat flour for half of the white flour. Instead of two large eggs, I used one higher omega-3 egg and 1/4 cup of egg substitute. The original recipe also calls for a pound (16 ounces) of chocolate chunks, but 12 ounces works perfectly.

I've done makeovers on a few different chocolate-chip cookie recipes over the years, and this particular one is definitely the best-tasting. All of the little reductions added up, because the finished cookies contain 25 percent fewer calories, 40 percent less fat, 64 percent less saturated fat and 75 percent less cholesterol than the original recipe.

Original recipe contains 250 calories, 12 grams fat, 7 grams saturated fat, and 33 milligrams cholesterol per cookie.

JACQUES TORRES' SECRET CHOCOLATE-CHIP COOKIES — LIGHT