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When the weather turns cold and foraging season slows down, I generally turn to harvesting evergreen needles – pine, spruce, fir and hemlock. The past week or so I’ve been starting my day with a cup of pine needle tea. But, ummm, in the afternoon I’d like a cookie with that tea. Pine needle sugar cookies are perfect.
I like to use organic whole wheat pastry flour for cookies, and I find that I digest it much better than a lot of other wheat flours, but organic unbleached makes an awesome cookie, too. And organic coconut sugar is perfect for sweetening. The flour, and especially the coconut sugar mean that the cookies are a darker color, but I’m good with that. It’s the crispy, crunchy that I’m after.
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I adore recipes that have a hint of orange and these cookies are no exception. I love the combination of the orange and the pine. But leave the grated orange rind out if you prefer.
For these cookies, the pine needles are used as the decoration, but they could just as easily be combined into the dough. Either way, these pine needle cookies are awesome.
Before we get to the pine needle sugar cookie recipe, you may be interested in other recipes that use pine. Many of these are medicinal.
Redwood Needle Shortbread Cookies
Peppermint Pine Headache Salve
And if you prefer a grain-free cookie, try these Almond Flour Sugar Cookies from Fit as a Mama Bear.
Ingredients
- 3/4 cups softened butter
- 1 cup coconut sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon grated orange rind optional
- 2 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/2 cup pine needles
Instructions
- Cream butter and sugar.
- Beat in eggs and vanilla extract.
- Stir in flour, orange rind, baking powder and sea salt.
- Cover and chill at least 1 hour (or overnight).
- Finely chop the pine needles in a food processor or blender and set aside for decorating the cookies.
- Preheat oven to 400°F.
- Roll chilled dough on floured surface 1/4" thick.
- Cut into shapes with cookie cutters. Place 1" apart on ungreased cookie sheet.
- Decorate as desired with pine needles.
- Bake for 5 - 6 minutes. Cool.
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Barbara Curtin says
Where do you get pine needles? Can you take them from any fir tree, or does the tree have to be a pine tree? I’m not sure I know the difference between fire trees.
Susan Vinskofski says
Hi Barbara! All firs are edible as well and may be used the same way.
Sara says
The only thing to watch for is to make sure you do not harvest from a yew tree. They contain highly toxic alkaloids. But other than that most conifers are edible and very good for you. Google can help you identify.
Susan Vinskofski says
You are correct, Sara. Yew is not in the Pinaceae (pine) family, but pine, spruce, fir and hemlock all are!
Mary Lapointe says
Hemlock is poison, isnt it?
Susan Vinskofski says
Hi Mary, poison hemlock is a plant totally unrelated to the hemlock tree. The needles of the hemlock are edible. 🙂
Sherry Sinclair says
My son is a vegan. Do you think I could use vegan butter?
Susan Vinskofski says
I have no experience at all with vegan butter, but if it works in other recipes I would think it would work here. Thanks for stopping by!
Samantha says
What a great list of pine-needle recipes! My partner and I are just beginning to broaden our pine-needle repertoire; we’ve made pine-needle tea before a love it! Living in Maine, naturally we have an abundance of pine trees everywhere; I’ll definitely be giving these recipes a try! Thanks!!!
Susan Vinskofski says
Thank you, Samantha. I tend to forage a lot of pine (and other evergreens) at this time of year since there isn’t a lot else to forage.
Jacqueline says
Thank you for this recipe. I understand that pine needles help get rid of the toxins from the covid vaccine.
I am having trouble finding any information on balsam as a tea. Is balsam safe to consume?
Susan Vinskofski says
These posts may help:
http://www.naturalmedicinalherbs.net/herbs/a/abies-balsamea=balsam-fir.php
https://joshfecteau.com/foraging-wild-teas-balsam-fir/
https://learningandyearning.com/identify-pine-spruce-fir-hemlock/