Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Healthy Gingerbread Cookie Pizzas

Chiquita has strange requests sometimes.  So I wasn't really surprised when she asked me for cookie candy pizza.  An episode from Nick Jr.'s Team Umizoomi had ice cream pizzas so I suppose it was just a matter of time. 

Since the cookie base would be best with sugar cookie or gingerbread I decided that this was a perfect time to try adding sweet potato to a cookie recipe!  Sweet potatoes are easily one of the World's Healthiest Foods with tons of vitamin A, vitamin C, fiber, protein, vitamin B6 B5 and B3, iron, and calcium.  It's also full of antioxidants!  I didn't think I liked them until I got married and my South American hubby introduced me to new ways of eating this great food.  I love them steamed, fried, in soup, in pies and cookies, just not with buckets of brown sugar and marshmallows on top.

Here's my sweet potato gingerbread recipe:
1/2 cup steamed or roasted sweet potato (just take one large sweet potato and either put it in the microwave for 8 to 10 minutes or the oven at 350 degrees for about an hour, you'll have more than half a cup)
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup butter softened
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 cup molasses
1 Tbsp vinegar
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups white flour

Mix the sweet potato, sugar and butter with an electric mixer until smooth.  Add everything else except the flour and mix.  Mix in flour a half cup at a time until you can't use the electric mixer anymore.  Add the rest by hand.  Let the dough chill for a few hours.

Roll out the dough and cut it out how you want.  I made a few bigger circles for "pizzas" and some small cut-outs.  Turn oven to 375 degrees and bake for 5 minutes.

When they were cooked and cooled I topped one of the "pizzas" with cream cheese frosting and gave it to Chiquita with a variety of dried fruit, chocolate covered raisins and even a few m&ms for toppings in mini muffin liners.

She had fun adding all the toppings, telling me what designs she was making.  When she had used all the toppings, she declared it "beautiful" and we tucked in.  Delicious as well!

1 comment:

  1. i've been wanting to make real gingerbread, would love if you shared this on our #kidsinthekitchen linky this week http://lookwhatmomfound.com/2013/11/making-mini-muffin-corn-dogs-kidsinthekitchen.html

    ReplyDelete