Beans in Your Christmas Baking!

December will find me in my kitchen with every available space on the table and counters filled with baking ingredients and cooling cookies. Giving baked goods has been a tradition of mine ever since I can remember. I love to see the delight on people’s faces when you give them something homemade!

I make candy cane cookies just like my mom’s, a Heath bar cookie recipe from an old friend, chocolate crinkle and Russian teacake cookies from the “Betty Crocker Cooky Book” that I received as a bridal shower gift 40 years ago, and a variety of other cookies. Each cookie has a special memory, and I like adding new recipes for new memories.

I recently read a blog post from Super Healthy Kids about a little girl who had an allergy to food dyes. Her aunt baked her cut-out cookies and frosted them using dyes made out of beets and spinach. The recipe she used for the cookies was her sister-in-law’s, which uses pureed white beans to replace some of the saturated fat in the cookies. Sounded like a recipe I needed to add to my repertoire! I didn’t make the frosting that was with the recipe, I made this frosting from I am Baker, but here is the link for the vegetable dye frosting.

The cookies made with the beans were wonderful. My husband said he likes this recipe better than the ones I have been making for the last 40 years!

Christmas Bean Cookies

Adapted from Super Healthy Kids

Ingredients:

½ cup cold butter

½ cup white bean puree, cold (I used cannellini beans)

1 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla

¼ teaspoon pure almond extract

3½ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

Directions:

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

Cream the butter, bean puree, and sugar together until well combined. Add eggs one at a time and mix until well incorporated. Add vanilla and almond extract.

In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder and salt. Add dry ingredients to the butter mixture and mix just until dough comes together.

Turn out onto generously floured surface. Make sure dough is covered on all sides with flour before starting to roll out.