The first Pudding Cookie Experiment

Tracy regularly sends me links of different food recipes she comes across and, one that we intrigued me recently, involved creating something called "pudding cookies".  The idea is, adding instant pudding mix to a cookie batter creates a cookie that stays soft for days.  Wait, what?  Do you realize how many different instant pudding flavors you can find at your local supermarket?  This opened a lot of opportunities to indulge my inner cookie monster so, the next time I headed to the store, I picked up several different flavors to experiment with.

The first "pudding cookie" experiment I wanted to try was to create a cookie using pistachio nuts and pistachio instant pudding mix.  I was intrigued with the idea of creating a cookie with a mix of sweet and salty flavors.  The base pudding cookie recipe I used came from kraft's recipes site, substituting my instant pudding mix and pistachio nuts for the chocolate chips (I'll post full recipe and instructions below).  Two things I did for this batch may have made this experiment less successful than I hoped.  First, I couldn't find chopped Pistachio nuts so put them in our food chopper as I thought the smaller pieces would work better than adding full pistachios to the batter.  Unfortunately, the chopper turned some of the nuts into dust so I had to dump the nuts into a sieve before I could add them, which resulted in much of the salt being lost from the nuts.  Second, I noticed the green coloring of the pudding mix lightened considerably so I toyed with adding so green food coloring to give them a more distinct look, but chose not to do so.

The green in this picture is actually more distinct than the actual cookie dough

This resulted in a cookie with only a faint greenish tint to it, so I'll definitely add coloring the next time I make these.

I know what you're thinking; "Forget what they looked like, how did they taste?"  While not what I imagined, they resulted in an interesting cookie that I was overall satisfied with.  The consistency was as soft as you'd expect from a "Pudding Cookie" but the flavor had less of a distinct Pistachio taste and reminded me more of a Pecan Sandie, which just happens to be one of my favorite cookies.  So, all in all, I'd have to call this one a success but will be making a couple of tweaks the next time I make these.

Pistachio Pudding Cookie Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of butter (softened or at room temperature)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup of Brown Sugar (packed)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups flour (I used all-purpose)
• 1 package instant Pistachio Pudding mix (3.9 ounce)
• 1 cup Pistachios (I suggest using salted, shelled Pistachios and leaving them whole).
• Green Food Coloring - add a drop at a time until color you want is reached (totally optional but I'd recommend this step; otherwise coloring is just a little strange).

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line one or two cookie sheets with parchment paper then set aside.
2. Beat butter and sugar in large bowl with mixer until light and fluffy.  Add dry pudding mix; beat until well incorporated.  Add eggs and baking soda; mix well.  Gradually beat in flour until well blended.  OPTIONAL:  add in green food coloring, a drop at a time, until you get the color you want consistently throughout the dough.  Stir in Pistachio nuts.
3. Drop approximate tablespoon sizes of dough, 2 inches apart, on cookie sheet.  We generally use a cookie dough scoop similar to this one when making cookies.
4. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, or until edges are lightly browned.  Cool for 1 minute on sheets and then move to wire racks to cool completely.

(NOTE:  this experiment originally took place on July 8, 2013)