Carrot Cookies

You're probably thinking, Carrots? In a cookie? Really? But stay with me - they taste shockingly like completely normal cookies, with a little extra something. I had four large carrots left in the fridge after making a stew, and had no idea what to do. I googled, "what to do with carrots" (that exact phrase) and went down the rabbit hole of a post entitled "50 + 1 things to do with carrots" on a blog called That British Woman. Most of the recipes required more carrots than I had on hand, until I clicked on this recipe for carrot cookies. Voila. The cooked carrots add a slight sweetness to the cookies, plus a slightly different texture from the very soft cookies themselves. And they look neat.

I made just a few changes to the original recipe, including substituting some vegetable oil after I ran out of margarine. I've noted below how to substitute as I did, but I'd recommend using all margarine or butter if you've got it.

Total time to cook: 30 minutes
Makes 24-30 cookies, depending on how large or small

Ingredients:
2 cups of peeled carrots, sliced (four large carrots did the trick for me)
3/4 cup margarine (I used 1/4 cup vegetable oil and a 1/2 cup margarine, but again, I'd recommend going full margarine or butter)
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp kosher salt

Steps:
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
- In a small pot, bring water to a boil. Add the carrots and cook until they're very soft, about five to seven minutes.

- Drain the carrots and smash them until they're pretty mushy. I don't have a good mashing tool, so I put them in a ziploc bag and squished them using my hands.  Set the carrots aside to cool.

- In a medium bowl, cream the butter and sugar together using an electric hand mixer on medium-high. Go at it for at least a few minutes, because the more air you get in there, the fluffier your cookies will be.
- Still using the hand mixer on medium speed, mix in the egg and vanilla extract. Once those ingredients are all combined, mix in the carrots with a spoon.
- In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt.
- Combine the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients using the hand mixer, adding in a half of a cup of the dry at a time.

- Using a tablespoon, drop spoonfuls of the dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet, about an inch apart. Bake for 10 minutes, or until the bottoms turn a light golden brown.
- Let the cookies cool down on a wire rack before enjoying (obviously I don't do this, but it's what you should do.)