Crunchy Beet Cookies

This is a simple or rather amaeteurish experiment that I did,but the result was crunchy cookies that were tasty and obviously with the benefit of beets.They turned out good hence I am posting it.I found Beet cookies in a cookbook and also Vanilla cookies in another cookbook.The latter appealed to me and I decided to add pureed beets to it and see what happens.It was much better than the plain vanilla for sure.

Ingredients:
Raw Beet Puree: 2 tbsp peel,grate and puree raw beet in a blender without adding water.

All Purpose Flour: 3/4 cup
Baking Powder: almost 1/4 tsp
Salt: a small pinch
Castor Sugar /Powdered Sugar: 6 tbsp

Vegetable Shortening/Dalda Vanaspati : 6 tbsp melted
Vanilla essence : 1-2 tsp (optional)

Preparation:

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour ,baking powder,salt and powdered sugar.Add in raw beet puree and mix well.Add in melted shortening and optionally vanilla essence. Mix well to form a dough.The dough will be crumbly.

Pinch tablespoonful or small pieces of dough and press together in hand and flatten it to a circle .If interested you can shape it using a cookie cutter.Place the unbaked cookies in a lined/greased (I did both) baking sheet.

Bake in a preheated oven at 160C (320F) for 20-25 minutes till the bottom starts browning and the cookies rise.Take out and let it cool in the baking sheet itself for 10 minutes till they harden and become crunchy.

The first batch were done by 20 minutes itself.I allowed the cookies to harden in the oven itself after turning it off. Its not necessary to do the same.You can also adjust the baking temperature and bake these.The second batch of small size cookies I baked for additional 2 minutes and allowed them to cool in the same baking sheet outside the oven.After ten minutes they were more brownish than the first batch,the bottoms turning almost blackish.So do adjust the temperature and bake.

Also instead of beets spinach puree can also be used.If you do not like to add anything,simply omit the beet puree and add vanilla and also top the unbaked cookie with candied cherries/tutty frutti to obtain plain vanilla cookies.