Chocolate Chip Beet Cookies

This incredibly delicious recipe for beet cookies is different from most. Most cookies with beets are made with fresh beets, but these are made with beet powder. They're super chocolatey, decadent, and easy to make without a mess.

Reminiscent of red velvet, with a unique flavor that's both chocolatey and floral. And while I love beets, these beet cookies don't really taste like beets.

When you bite into the cookie, you'll detect a hard-to-name interesting and delicious flavor.

Gorgeous, rich and decadent, you'll want to make these for all of your friends and family.

The Ingredients

• all-purpose flour - If you're gluten-free, see Substitutions and Variations below.
• beetroot powder (also called beet powder) - Beet powder is simply dried beets that have been ground. It's most commonly used in smoothies, but it's fantastic in baked goods, too. It's packed with nutrients and a little goes a long way. You can find it online, and it's most often in the vitamin powder section of major grocery stores.
• baking powder - If you don’t bake regularly, it’s a good idea to check to be sure your baking powder is still good. To do so, pour a couple of tablespoons of boiling water over about ¼ teaspoon of the baking powder. If it starts to fizz, it’s still good.
• Kosher salt - If you use table salt, use half the amount.
• unsalted butter - I always bake and cook with unsalted butter so I can better control exactly how much salt goes in the recipe.
• light brown sugar
• granulated sugar
• pure vanilla extract - I like this one.
• egg
• semisweet chocolate chips

(See recipe card for quantities.)

Substitutions and Variations

• All-purpose flour. This can be substituted with Cup4Cup Multipurpose Gluten-Free flour.
• Light brown sugar. You can also use dark brown sugar, but the beet flavor (which is subtle) might shine a bit more if you use the light.
• Semisweet chocolate chips. I also love these beet cookies with milk or Ruby chocolate chips. And using white chocolate is pretty because of the contrast in colors. My favorite though are semisweet because of the deep chocolate flavor.

Recipe Tips

• For a beautiful color, do not use baking soda! The outside will be brownish with just a hint of red, and the inside will look like a typical chocolate chip cookie. I'm far from a scientist, so here's an explanation if you're interested. Baking powder can also change the beet color, but less so. And after a lot of testing, I found that ¼ teaspoon of baking powder wouldn't change the color and would be just enough to give the cookies a lift.

As you can see in the image above, the cookie with the baking soda is not only brown, but it's also flatter. The baking powder makes a plump cookie that's a bright magenta -- both were scooped with the same size cookie scoop and baked at the same temperature, for the same amount of time. They both taste great, but the magenta one is prettier and more fun (in my humble opinion). 😉

• The instructions say to "halfway" melt the butter. No big deal if it's not exactly half and half. (Half will be solid but soft, and the other half melted -- more or less!)
• Don't worry if your dry ingredients look very light in color. As soon as you mix them with the wet ingredients, the magenta color from the beet powder will pop.
• As with most cookies, when they come out of the oven, they might still seem a tad doughy. Within in a few minutes cooling time out of the oven, they'll look perfect.

Why use beet powder instead of raw beets?

You can certainly make fantastic baked goods with raw beets, however there a few reasons I prefer using the powder in this recipe.

• It's extremely convenient!
• It's not messy at all. All you need is a spoon to add the powder. (Unless you want pink hands, you need to wear cooking gloves when you work with raw beets.)
• Less is more! Approx. 1 teaspoon of beetroot powder equals 1 whole (average-sized) beet. So much nutrition is packed into that one teaspoon.
• Since it's a powder, the texture of the cookie doesn't become cake-like -- the texture is the same as a typical chocolate chip cookie that's not too chewy or too crisp.

Storing the Cookies

• Once the cookies have completely cooled, they can be stored in an airtight container, at room temperature for up to 3 days. If you don’t plan to serve them within the first couple days after baking them, you can freeze them.
• They can be kept frozen in an air-tight container for up to a month. (Longer is okay, but the longer they’re frozen, the more moisture they’ll loose.)

Other Deliciously Unique Cookie Recipes

• Everything Bagel Cookie
• Chai Chocolate Chunk Cookies
• Peanut Butter Miso Cookies
• The Best Lemon Blueberry Cookies
• Lemon Crinkle Cookies

How to Make Them

- Preheat the oven to 375℉ and line one or two sheet pans with parchment paper.



- In a large bowl, blend the flour, beetroot powder, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

- Melt the butter about halfway and then in another bowl, mix it with both sugars and the vanilla until blended. Then add the egg and mix to blend.

- Pour the dry ingredients over the wet ingredients and mix until it's about halfway incorporated.

- Add the chocolate chips and continue to mix just until you no longer see dry spots.



- Use a 1¾-inch cookie scoop to shape the batter -- the bottom of each scoop should be leveled off. Place them at least 2-inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet as you go. Sprinkle each one with a little bit of Kosher or coarse salt.



- Bake in the preheated 375℉ oven until they no longer look wet and the edges are look like they're firming up, about 12 minutes. (They'll be ever so slightly golden along the edges, but it will be hard to see because of the color.)



- Let the cookies cool on the baking sheets for about 10 minutes. Then transfer them to a cooling rack and wait to serve them until they’re room temperature.

I hope my chocolate chip beet cookies are as big a hit in your house as they are in mine!