Green Cookies. Weird.

One of my favorite things to do lately is bake with Ada. It's got to be something about it being winter and switching on the oven to make the kitchen super-warm. (I'm always cold.) Cookies, brownies, and breads taste great. And my kid is adorable and getting cuter by the day. I suppose there are many reasons I enjoy it so much.

I think Ada has fun, too.

But in our most recent experiment, even Ada's smile turned sour.


We had set out to make a healthy pumpkin chocolate chip cookie with minimal fat and sugar. A quick snack mommy could grab while she screams. The dough tasted great.

Here's what was inside . . .

• 1/2 cup pumpkin
• 2/3 cup sunflower butter
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups rolled oats, processed into flour
• 1/2 cup golden flax meal
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips

I preheated the oven to 350, mixed everything up, and baked for 12 minutes.


Stephen and I both grabbed a freshly baked cookie before heading to our neighbors' house for the afternoon. We put the rest in the fridge.

When we returned, we were horrified to find that the cookies looked like THIS on the inside:


What happened??? Of course, since I'm breastfeeding, I immediately thought I had poisoned Ada by eating them. Surely the green color had to indicate some chemical reaction gone wrong. Or worse -- an ingredient gone South.

Though I've used sunflower butter in baking before, Sunflower Chippers, I never had this result.

See?


Back to the green. My mom found this information about the unique reaction that causes things to turn green. Especially after the cookies completely cool down. (Hence why we noticed it after placing them in the refrigerator.)

Crazy, right? What's the strangest thing that's ever happened to YOU in the kitchen?

And speaking of green things (OK, her poop isn't green!), we've detailed our cloth diapering routine today on (never home)maker, baby! It's been a month and so far, so good.

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Sunflower Butter Cookies

I'm going to take this recipe down a peg from the very start because it sounds, at least to me, like something totally novel and groundbreaking. It's not. It's simply a modification of my favorite peanut butter cookie recipe . . . using sunflower butter. I did change around the ingredients a bit to suit the roasted seed spread, which has a higher salt content than the natural peanut butter I typically use.

You can find sunflower butter (I used SunButter) in the natural foods section at your grocery store (that's where they stow it at Wegmans). But I found mine in an unlikely place: Target. I went to Target during lunch one day and found myself in the food section (definitely not the place to go if you're tying to eat whole foods, that's for sure!). It looked interesting, and now I'm hooked. But much like with my new favorite (the MaraNatha Dark Chocolate Almond Spread), it's kind of pricey ($6 per jar).

What's cool about sunflower butter is that just one serving packs one-third less saturated fat than peanut butter. As well, you'll enjoy 27 percent of a day's recommended allowance of vitamin E. If not for that, it's at least worth buying once so you can make this awesome vegan recipe and enjoy the rest in some oatmeal (with strawberry jam and bananas!).


What you'll need . . .

• 1/2 cup sunflower butter
• 1/2 cup Earth Balance (or your favorite butter substitute)
• 1 cup natural granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup natural, unsweetened applesauce
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1-1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (or a mix of white and wheat)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips

Method . . .

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare a cookie sheet by covering it with a sheet of parchment paper (for easy cleanup).
2. Cream together the sunflower butter, Earth Balance, and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment.
3. Stir in the applesauce and vanilla extract.
4. In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Add this dry mixture to the wet with a spatula and mix until combined (but do not over mix).
5. Stir in the chocolate chips. Plop heaping tablespoons of dough onto your cookie sheet -- spacing them about two inches apart. Then press the dough down with the back of a fork.
6. Bake for approximately 10 minutes -- until golden brown.

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