The best Saint Patrick’s Day treat is a batch of these tantalizing green pistachio cookies! Avocado and applesauce are the two secret components that maintain the entire flavor and texture!
| Prep Time: | 15 mins |
| Cook Time: | 15 mins |
| Additional Time: | 5 mins |
| Total Time: | 35 mins |
| Servings: | 35 |
| Yield: | 70 1 1/2-inch cookies |
Ingredients
- ½ ripe avocado
- ¼ cup unsalted butter, softened
- ½ cup applesauce (such as Mott’s®)
- ½ cup white sugar
- ¼ cup skim milk
- 1 large egg
- 2 (3.4 ounce) packages instant pistachio pudding mix (such as Jell-O®)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ⅔ cup pistachio nuts
- 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line 3 baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Puree avocado in the bowl of a food processor. Add butter and blend until creamy. Add applesauce, sugar, and milk; pulse to combine. Add egg; pulse until smooth. Add pudding mix, vanilla extract, baking powder, and salt; pulse until dough is smooth and pastel green.
- Place pistachio nuts in a resealable freezer bag and crush with a meat mallet. Add crushed pistachio nuts and flour to dough; pulse to combine.
- Drop tablespoons of dough 2 inches apart onto prepared baking sheets; flatten gently.
- Bake in the preheated oven until bottoms are beginning to brown, about 15 minutes. Remove from oven and cool on baking sheets, 5 to 10 minutes.
- Grease baking sheets lightly instead of lining with parchment paper, if preferred.
- Substitute vanilla extract with the scraped seeds of 1 fresh vanilla bean, or 1/8 teaspoon of pistachio flavoring.
- I flatten the cookies with the end of the pusher from your food processor. If you don’t flatten the cookies, they’ll bake up in softly flattened mounds; they’re lovely either way.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 93 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 15 g |
| Cholesterol | 9 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Protein | 2 g |
| Saturated Fat | 1 g |
| Sodium | 139 mg |
| Sugars | 7 g |
| Fat | 3 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
These have a good flavor but they are too doughy, even after leaving them in the oven for 15 minutes. The inside is too wet. I have no idea how to fix that.
3.15.16 Followed this recipe with one substitution, using sugar-free pistachio pudding mix. Also, my avocado was very small, so I used all of it. The cookie dough was on the soft side after processing, so I did give it about 15 minutes in the fridge to firm up a bit, as well as refrigerating it between batches. Not quite as much flavor as I had hoped, but I can’t put my finger on what’s missing. Recipe author suggests using pistachio flavor in place of vanilla, but I know that would be yet another thing that I buy that just sits on the shelf. If I make this recipe again, I definitely will try almond extract. If you can plan ahead, I’d recommend shelling your pistachios in advance because it was time consuming to get 2/3 cup of pistachio nuts out of those shells. Used a Tbsp cookie scoop, and ended up with 45 cookies which were about the same size baked, as they were before going into the oven (not much rise). We liked these cookies, but I wouldn’t put them at the top of my list. Kate’s Kitchen, thanks for sharing your recipe with us.