I was poking around looking at something on in my RSS reader (which currently is Feedly) and saw a post about Root Beer cookies. A lot of times I’ll bookmark something and go “yeah, I’ll make that” and never do, but the Root Beer cookies kind of gnawed at me. Could a cookie really taste sort of like a soda flavor?
The “magic” ingredient for these cookies?
Root beer concentrate.
Who knew this was a thing?! You can even make homemade root beer with this stuff (which is something I’ll have to do next). I found the root beer concentrate at the Wal-Mart grocery store in La Mesa since I hate going to “real” Wal-Marts. Woo!
The dough for this one is a bit wet, which surprised me. I thought it would be a stiffer, drier dough (more like chocolate chip cookie dough) but it scooped really well and made it easy to make very uniform cookies with my ice cream scoop.
The cookies came out perfectly round and I used my fancy new silicon baking bats to get a lovely, even brown on the bottom.
The cookies really don’t need anything else at this point. They are chock full of root beer flavor goodness. I saw a few recipes that filled them with root beer flavored filling, or put root beer frosting on top but it sounded like overkill to me. The root beer flavor is prominent and well pronounced in these soft cookies. They have a slight crisp on the edge making them extremely lovely and delicious all at once.
I went one step further though with these and transformed them into root beer float cookies by adding vanilla bean ice cream to the middle.
I scooped the ice cream in and served these at a BBQ last weekend so the cookies would stay soft while you were eating them. The combination of root beer flavored cookie + ice cream really made this taste like a float to me. Great treat for all your summer BBQ’s – with or without the ice cream!
I wonder what other concentrates are floating around out there. Can I make cookies with all of them? I kind of feel like I should.
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup packed light brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 cup coconut oil
- 2 T heavy cream
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 T plus 2 tsp root beer concentrate
- 3 1/2 cups flour
- 1 tsp cream of tartar
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Melt coconut oil over low heat until it is no longer solid and has magically become a liquid again. Set aside to cool.
- In a bowl, whisk together the dry items (flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt). Set aside.
- Place room temperature butter and sugars into a mixing bowl. Use an electric mixer to beat the butter and sugars together over medium speed for 4-5 minutes until very light and creamy.
- Beat in the egg until well blended. Add oil, cream, vanilla and root beer concentrate and cream it together until it's happy.
- Add 1/3 of the dry mixture to the wet, until it comes together. Keep adding it in 1/3 at a time. This helps to keep your kitchen and your shirt clean by not getting flour stuffs all over you.
- Using a medium ice cream scoop (or tablespoons), drop cookie dough onto cookie sheets with a silicon baking mat (or parchment paper). Keep cookies about 1-2 inches apart.
- Bake cookies for 10 minutes. Let cool on the cookie sheets for 3-4 minutes before removing them to a rack to cool.
- OPTIONAL: Turn these babies into "float" cookies by sandwiching vanilla ice cream in the middle. Eat immediately for maximum enjoyment.
Oh that looks like a yummy cookie. It looks very ‘molasses-y’. The recipe freaks me out b/c I’ NEVER baked with cream of tartar (doesn’t that make you think of tarter sauce) and coconut oil (doesn’t that make you think of sunscreen). But I might just muster up the courage to try this b/c it looks like a great dessert item for a summer party.
Hi Faye! The brown sugar gives it that nice brown color! Haha, cream of tartar does kind of make me thing of tater sauce. I used to be frightened of it, too, but it doesn’t bug me anymore. I have a little container in my spice cabinet just for recipes like this! You can sub the coconut oil for canola or something else – I just like to use coconut oil! It’s a good replacement for butter, too (I tried it once in cupcakes and it was quite good). You can get it at Trader Joe’s for $5.99 and it’s great to make homemade popcorn with!
This looks so good and even more so with a creamy filling. Now I have to find some root beer concentrate.
I never knew they made root beer concentrate until I saw a recipe for these cookies! I want to try making my own homemade root beer with it, too.
So awesome! I’m going to look for that root beer concentrate at our Wal-Mart. So cool!
I also like the recipe feature (is that new?) – save recipe & print. Very convenient!
Yes, the recipe plug-in is new! I like the way it styles the recipe. There are a bunch of different plug-ins out there, I liked the options in this one.