By Carol’s Beet and Acorn Cookies
I was both excited and a little bit nervous to try these. Excited because I remember Carol whipping up a batch of these cookies in the show and I always wondered what they might taste like. Nervous because, well, the cookies have beets and acorn in them. I don’t usually think “mmm…tasty!” when I think of beets or acorns.
This particular recipe is one that I’ve seen plastered all over the internet as a sample from the cookbook, including on Amazon
I had a hell of a time finding acorn flour, so I ended up ordering it on Amazon. It was right after I ordered it that I realized, if I just flipped the page, there was a recipe included on how to make homemade acorn flour on the other side. Whoops!
To be honest, though, that would have taken weeks to make so I just used the store-bought stuff I had already ordered.
Pureeing the water chestnuts and beets also proved to be challenging with just a blender. I did the best I could in there and then ended up just squishing them with a fork.
As with most baked cookie recipes, the wet ingredients and sugars were mixed in one bowl and the dry ingredients in another. They’re then combined and a large tablespoon was plopped onto the cookie sheets before being baked.
The recipe said to cook them for 14 minutes, rotating the tray half way through the 
process. The first batch came out a bit burnt, though, so I reduced the time by 2 minutes.
The second batch came out burnt as well, though less burnt that the first. So for the final batch, I only kept them in the oven for 10 minutes.
The last batch was perfect.
They actually weren’t all that bad! I didn’t taste any beets in there, which was good, but there really was only about 1/4 cup included in the entire batch so that wasn’t surprising.
I think they smelled a bit better than they tasted, but I still ate about four of them before packing the rest away.
The cookies that were even slightly burnt ended up being completely crunchy, but the batch that came out well was a perfect chewy consistency.
Also, they were not pink like Carol’s cookies. I was a little disappointed there.
Taste: 6/10
These were pretty good considering they’re full of beets, water chestnuts, and acorn flour, but in the grand scheme of things they’re pretty average cookies. They have a subtle earthy flavor, and kind of reminded me of oatmeal cookies.
Difficulty: Average
I struggled when it came to pureeing the beets and water chestnuts, and I really did need to monitor the oven when it came to cooking time, but otherwise this was a fairly straight-forward cookie recipe.
If you were to make your acorn flour, I bump the difficultly level up to “challenging.”
Cost: Average
Most people will have flour, sugar, etc. in their pantry already. The biggest costs here were a can of beets, a can of water chestnuts, and the acorn flour. Not too bad, but I did have to buy a bag of acorn flour and I don’t really know where else I would use it.
It might be a bit cheaper if you make your own acorn flour, but will take a helluva lot more time and effort.
Suggestion:
These would work well with some milk or hot chocolate.
Be sure to monitor the cookies carefully during the baking process to make sure they don’t burn!
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