Green Pistachio Pudding Cookies

Made with Jell-O Pistachio Pudding, these green cookies add a dash of color to your St. Patrick’s Day menu.

Pistachio pudding was a favorite when I was a kid.  My mom would pour milk and instant pudding mix into a mason jar, and my sisters and I would shake it.  It was magic.  The white milk quickly turned green and slowly thickened.  When it was ready–or our patience ran out–we spooned the pudding into bowls and shared our treat.

When I was de-dairying my diet, I tried making instant pistachio pudding with rice milk.  I poured the rice milk into a jar and added the pudding mix.  The kids shook the jar.  They were impressed when the milk turned green, but that was all, because it didn’t thicken.  Undaunted, I poured the mixture into a bowl and pulled out the electric mixture.  After several minutes of mixing, I gave up and served green, pistachio-flavored rice milk.

Now (and perhaps then too), instant pudding mixes come with the warning that it doesn’t thicken with soy milk.  (Or rice milk from my experience.)

I haven’t made pudding from a mix since my pudding disaster, but I still remember how great pistachio pudding tasted.  Starr Wong’s pistachio pudding cookie recipe on her Misfit Baker blog, reminded me how much I love pistachio pudding, and left me wanting to eat it again.  Since the pudding didn’t work out, why not eat it in a cookie?

The cookies are delicious and magical in transforming a plain cookie into an extraordinary cookie.

To suit my cooking style, I changed the cookie recipe a bit.  The cookies that cooked closer to 11 minutes had a crisp shortbread texture after cooling, and the cookies that were cooked for only 9 minutes were crisp on the edges and soft in the inside.  This contrast is perfect because half of my taste-testers prefer crisp and the other half prefer soft.  My personal favorite might have been the cookie dough. (Don’t tell the kids I was snitching).  The flavor of pistachio pudding was stronger in the dough than in the baked cookies.

---

Green Pistachio Pudding Cookies

1 cup (minus 2 Tbls) oil

2 Tbls water

1 cup granulated sugar

1 egg

1 pkg (3.5 oz) Jello Brand Pistachio Instant Pudding*

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350°.  With a stand mixer or hand mixer: beat oil, water and sugar until well combined. Add the egg and continue mixing until the mixture is creamy in texture.  Add the pudding mix and combine throughly.  Add the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt, Stirring until mixed, but not overmixed.  (Whisking the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl first is recommended.)

Use a 1 tablespoon measuring scoop to form the cookies or roll them into 1 tablespoon-sized balls.  Bake on a silpat or parchment paper lined cookie sheet.

Bake at 350° for 9-11 minutes.  Cool on a cooling rack.

Makes 3 dozen cookies, plus a few snitches of dough.

*Be careful. Some store brands of pistachio instant puddings contain dairy ingredients in the mix.