Tuesday, September 28, 2010

A different kind of heartbeat...

...little heart beat beet cookies! :)
The idea for these comes from a great site for healthy kid food recipes called Weelicious.  A friend came over yesterday armed with a little bunch of organic beets (and her little one).  
Her daughter loves these "sweet beet cookies", so she brought over some beets for us to make some. Aside from the beets, all the ingredients are things you would normally have on hand (flour, sugar, oil, baking powder, salt).  So, they are very easy to make, and the kids can totally help too.  They LOVED rolling out the dough and cutting out the shapes! Truly edible play-dough! :)
We decided on hearts and stars--thus discovering the cute name of "heartbeet cookies". :)
How perfect are these for Valentine's Day?!


The recipe calls for All Purpose flour, but I only had whole wheat on hand.  I would definitely recommend using the AP or half AP/half whole wheat at most, as the wheat flavor overpowers everything else in ours.  And, the sugar content is very low, so these "cookies" don't taste very cookie-like to the adults.  However, that being said, the kids (ages 2 & 3) LOVED them!  Seriously, my little guy has been asking for them everyday--multiple times a day.  What's not to love about a healthy, low sugar "cookie" with a vegetable in it?! (This would also be a really great thing for families dealing with egg allergies)
Your kids will LOVE baking these!  


Here is the Weelicious recipe:

Sweet Beet Cookies (Makes about 50 – 1 inch square cookies)
1 Cup All Purpose Flour
1/2 Tsp Baking Powder
2 Tbsp Sugar
1/4 Tsp Salt
1/2 Cup Raw Beets, shredded fine*
2 Tbsp Oil
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Combine the first four ingredients and stir to combine.
3. Using your hands, add the beets to the flour mixture coating the beet pieces with the flour.
4. Add the oil and work with your hands to bring the dough together (the salt and sugar will fall to the bottom of the bowl so make sure you knead the dough well to combine everything — the outcome will be a smooth dough).
5. Form the smooth, sweet beet dough into a flat rectangular disk and roll it out 1/2 inch thick on parchment paper or a dry clean surface.
6. Using a knife, cut the dough into squares or use small cookie cutters to cut out shapes.
7. Bake on a Silpat or parchment-lined cookie sheet for 15-17 minutes.
8. Cool and serve.
*You can only use RAW fine shredded beets for this recipe. Using canned beets will not work because of the thickness of the beets and they are already cooked.
*These cookies are best stored on the counter in an air-tight container.

Check out Weelicious.com for other great, healthy recipes! 


handmade projectsabc button

3 comments:

  1. Those are such pretty cookies too! I'll be grabbing some beets at the farmers market this week just to try these! Thanks for sharing! (I found you through ABC123)
    -Kara
    http://littlelearnerslounge.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. These sound great! I love mixing veggies and something sweet! This is a great idea!
    suchakingdom.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  3. So cute- Thanks for sharing- I also love having some healthier alternative recipes on hand

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts with Thumbnails