Super Double Chocolate Cookies

If you have been following my journey for a while, you know that I like to sneak vegetables into my picky little 3 year old any way that I can.  This often involves vegetable purees of sorts and occasionally involves dessert. 

I was looking at a magazine the other day that featured red velvet cookies.  Red velvet cookies sounded like fun, but obscene amounts of red food coloring did not.  So I started researching and found this fun fact:

Did you know that traditionally red velvet cake/cookies/etc were tinted red either by including vinegar to bring out the natural red coloring in cocoa OR by adding beet puree?  Also, these red velvet goodies were more of a brown-red than the bright food coloring red we typically think of when we hear “red velvet”.

Anyway, the words “beet puree” and dessert got my wheels turning and I knew it was experiment time!  These cookies ended up not turning red at all, thus the reason I did not name them red velvet cookies, but were quite scrumptious.  My brother (who knows my tendency to put strange things in desserts) suspected that I had done something to these cookies, but never in a million year would have guessed that it was beets.  One word of warning though, you will NOT want to store these in a ziplock bag or anything completely airtight as you will get a really strong beet smell when you open the bag (my dad refused to eat these after he smelled it).  However, my glass cookie jar was able to dissipate enough of the smell and keep the cookies moist.

Super Double Chocolate Cookies

An Amy Original

½ cup Crisco

½ cup white sugar

½ cup brown sugar

1 egg

½ cup beet puree (if it is watery from being in the freezer, be sure to strain it a bit first)

2 tbsp cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp vanilla

1 cup all purpose flour

½ cup whole wheat flour

1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

Beat Crisco and sugars together

Add the eggs, beat until very fluffy.

Add the beat puree, cocoa powder, baking soda, and vanilla and mix.  Slowly add in the flour until desired consistency (you may need more or less depending upon how watery your beet puree is).

Stir in chocolate chips.  Cover and refrigerate a couple hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Spoon cookies onto a cookie sheet using a 2 tbsp cookie scoop.  Bake 8-10 minutes

Yields: about 30 cookies

Enjoy!

Amy