My youngest son & me

My youngest son & me

About me

Hi!
My name is Tanja (Sater) Miller and I'm excited about sharing my journey of converting my favorite recipes to gluten free! I am not a fancy cook - I prefer just a casual, fun meal. I am married with grown children (and have small grandchildren) & 3 dogs. I work full time as a registered nurse & I am a geek. Yes, I love Star Trek, Star Wars, Fringe, Firefly, Farscape and most of the other Scify shows. You will probably see a little of my geek side come out once in a while! Please join me on my journey of cooking, baking & converting every day recipes into yummy gluten free meals that everyone can enjoy (not just those with a gluten allergy!) Don't be shy about checking out my recipes....I have the gluten free version along with the regular recipe that I adapted from!

Monday, December 3, 2012

Pistachio Cookies

Pistachio Cookies. A friend of mine used to give us a cookie plate every Christmas with these cute little green cookies that were similar to a sugar cookie but with a hint of pistachio flavoring. She never shared the recipe. Well for some reason I had a hankering for these cookies so I begged for her recipe. She finally caved in and shared the recipe. It was a pre-packaged sugar cookie mix with a pistachio dry pudding mix combined with a couple other ingredients. Well...that wasn't going to work for me. I needed a basic recipe that I could tweak and make it gluten free. (I guess I could have purchased a gluten free cookie mix but they are so expensive and some of them are not real tasty). So off to the drawing board I went. I decided to just experiment and make up my own recipe until it worked and I had the cookie taste & texture I wanted. I did end up using a few drops of green food coloring to give it a little more green color but you don't have to do that. If you don't have a gluten allergy, you can just go ahead and use regular flour for the gluten free flour blend. My husband is a die hard chocolate chip cookie lover and doesn't usually eat cookies without chocolate...but he actually liked these!

Pistachio Cookie Recipe:
  • 1/2 cup Crisco shortening
  • 1/2 cup real butter
  • 1 3/4 cup sugar (you can use raw sugar if you prefer)
  • 2 eggs
  • 4 tbs. heavy cream or milk (or water)
  • 2 1/2 c. gluten free flour blend (see recipe below). If you don't have a gluten allergy then you can just use regular flour.
  • 2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 2 boxes (3.4 oz. each) instant Pistachio Pudding mix, dry (if you are using a sugar free pudding mix then you will need to add about 1/3 cup additional flour)
  • few drops of green food coloring, optional
  • additional chopped pistachio nuts or almonds, optional
This is the type of dry pudding mix I used

Beat the shortening, butter and sugar until fluffy. Then add the dry Pistachio Pudding mixes, eggs and cream (or milk or water). Gradually add the flour, baking soda and salt. Stir in food coloring and additional nuts if you are adding them. (I did not add additional nuts to this batch today). Refrigerate for at least 1 hour before placing dough chilled dough balls onto un-greased cookie sheets. The dough had a beautiful mint green color that reminded me of mint chocolate chip ice cream! I like to use my cookie scoop to get my cookies fairly even in sizes. You can make the dough ahead and keep in the refrigerator for about a week or the dough balls in the freezer for 6 months. Bake the slightly chilled dough balls in preheated 350 degree oven for 8-10 minutes. The tops should just barely be getting lightly golden in color. You want to remove them before they get over-baked and lose their green color - unless of course you like a crispy cookie. These cookies will be soft and slightly chewy.

Gluten Free Flour Mix (that I used today)
  • 1/4 c. soy flour 
  • 1/4 cup corn starch (you can substitute tapioca starch)
  • 1 cup brown rice flour
  • 1 cup rice flour (I used sweet rice flour)

Gorgeous mint green dough

Chilled dough balls

Baked Cookies

Ready to eat!

I hope you enjoyed my journey of experimenting for the perfect pistachio cookie recipe!

Tanja
Gluten Free Casually

1 comment:

  1. These are also really pretty if you add dried cranberries to the batter before baking!

    ReplyDelete