Spruce Tree and Pine Pollen Cookies
Pine pollen cookies are great, spruce tree cookies are great. But spruce tree and pine pollen, together, make a super great cookie! Here's how I make Spruce Tree and Pine Pollen Cookies.
These cookies are a such a good way to appreciate any spruce trees or pine trees near you! These cookies are so simple to make! There's no eggs, baking soda, or baking powder - just flour, sugar, butter, pine pollen, and spruce needles soaked in water. Here's how I do it.
Step 1: Harvest the tender new growth on spruce trees and pollen from pine trees. Depending on the weather, and which spruce and pine trees are around, you might get the pollen or the new growth first. It doesn't matter. You can keep either one in the freezer!
I already made posts that show how to Harvest Pine Pollen and Young Spruce Tree Needles. Just click on those links to see them.
Step 2: Soak the spruce needles in water, out in the sun, for 6-8 hours. You can see that the needles have changed color. Don't throw out the water! It's great for making Spruce Tree Sorbet! I'll write an article on how to do that real soon, so stay tuned!
For the cookies, drain the water and chop the soft spruce needles into tiny bits.
Step 3: Get to baking some cookies. The amount of butter, sugar, and flour are flexible, but it's all based on how much pine pollen you have. I don't want just a little bit of pie pollen and spruce needles hidden in a standard cookie. I want to taste those great wild ingredients!
For this batch of cookies, I only had about 1/4 cup of pollen left. So the recipe goes like this:
- Cream together 2 Tablespoons of butter and 2 Tablespoons of sugar.
- Stir in 1/4 cup to 1/3 cup flour.
- Stir in 1/4 cup of pine pollen.
- Stir in all those finely chopped spruce needles, about 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup.
- Add only enough spruce water to get a nice cookie dough consistency -it doesn't take much at all.
The dough is just right for drop cookies with about 1 Tablespoon of dough for each cookie, on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake them at about 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 12-15 minutes. That's it!
Step 4: Get to eating some good cookies! Any sugar cookie or butter cookie recipe would work well for Spruce Tree and Pine Pollen Cookies. Just leave out the vanilla, cinnamon, or other spices to allow the flavor of the spruce tree and pine pollen to come through. Don't be timid about using enough pollen or spruce needles!
If you want to see how to put all this into action, with more details, here's my video on how to eat spruce trees:
What Do You Think?
I hope you get a chance to make Spruce Tree and Pine Pollen Cookies! If you do, I would really like to know about it! Put @haphazard-hstead in your post so I'll be notified and use the #foraging tag so all the Steemit foragers can find it!
- Have you ever eaten pine pollen or spruce needles?
- Would you eat my pine pollen and spruce tree cookies?
- Do you have any pine trees or spruce trees near you?
I write about foraging because I believe that we can all have lives that are richer, more secure, more grounded, and more interesting by getting to know the plants and the land around us – in our yards, our parks, and our wilderness.
I would like Steemit to be the premier site for Foraging on the Internet! If you have any thoughts about foraging, or experiences to share, write a post and be sure to use the Foraging tag. And check out the @foraging-trail to see curated quality posts about foraging. Happy Foraging!
Plant List
- Spruce trees: Genus Picea, Pine family (Pineaceae)
- Pine trees: Genus Pinus, Pine family (Pinaceae)
** Haphazard Homestead **
Wowwww!! I have plenty of both trees on our homestead and YES I would absolutely eat your cookies, I will be trying this @haphazard-hstead! You are AMAZING!!! :) This opens up a whole new world....
Conifers are so underappreciated for being good to eat. It's not every conifer that I'm using for needles or pollen. But pine pollen and spruce needles are good! I did use Douglas-Fir and Nobel Fir new growth in a recent salad -- and they are really good, too. Wild, Wild Salad.
Thanks for the link to your other article, I'll check it out for sure. You are making the most of the land and teaching others how to do it too, I love it! Our yard literally rains pine pollen, we have 7 massive white pine trees, it's gonna be cookies galore round here soon!
There is so much pollen that comes off pine trees! The key is finding branches low enough to the ground to get the little male cones off easily. There's no risk of running out of pine pollen, that's for sure! I'd sure like to hear from you how you like the pollen, once you harvest some next spring!
Yeah I have some with pretty low branches, and living in Nova Scotia, Canada, the season is just beginning! xoxoxoxxo The pollen hath arrived <3
Lucky you! Spring is the best season!
Yeah, we're a little bit late bloomers here, but not as far behind as other brrrrrrrrrrr... places in Canada :)
I wonder when our seasons will overlap. Your fall will happen sooner, too. So all your plants are on turbo-speed. It means you really have to get after it, once the spring arrives. Happy foraging! And it will be fun to read your taste reviews! :D
How do you find out about What to eat ?
I do a lot of learning, lol! There's more than a lifetime's worth to learn about what wild plants we can eat, and how to make good use of them. That's worth a whole series of posts. Thanks for the idea, Karen!
Your welcome, will be an interesting read :)
HH! You continually blow my mind with your wildcrafted comestibles of awesomeness! My only interaction with a spruce tree is a nice scar on my left arm courtesy of me meeting a branch of said species as I ran heathen like through the chunk of Alaskan woods that I dwelled in! You though, eat them! I can think of nothing more that I would like to try, especially the sorbet! Wow! Amazing post!!
Can't wait to try this recipe!
You need to turn the tables on those spruce trees. Revenge tastes so good in this case! :D I'll post about the sorbet soon. It's more of an adult taste than for kids, I think. because it has more subtle flavors and isn't super sweet.
That sounds even more intriguing, I am not a big fan of overly sweet things as I rarely eat sugar, so super excited to give the sorbet a go. Who knew that coniferous revenge could taste so sweet, er rich and sprucey, lol!
I have so much more to figure out about using spruce trees. There is a lot of possibility - even beyond the springtime. It's exciting!
I had no idea you could eat either ingredient! We had pine pollen all over the place earlier this spring. I wish i had known i could save and use it for more than sneezing at. I would love to try these cookies.
Pine pollen is so good! Every kind tastes a little different. It's pretty easy to harvest, too, if the branches with the little male cones are hanging low. It's so fine -- like a super-fine flour. These are great cookies, too! I hope you do get to try some!
Wow very interesting, how do they taste?
The pollen has a mild nutty flavor, like cattail pollen, or elderberry flower pollen, or even bee pollen, if you've had any of those. The spruce has a citrus and resin flavor. There's nothing I know to compare the resin flavor to. I talk more about each one in my posts on How to Harvest Pine Pollen and How to Eat a Spruce Tree. If you try any of those, it would be great to get your taste review!
I've only recently heard of eating conifer pollen. I never would have thought of putting it in Cookies though.
Pine pollen is great for baking because it's such a fine, fine powder. Great for pancakes, too! And of course, in smoothies but it's easy to overwhelm its flavor there. I hope you get to try some sometime!
That sounds too yummy! I'll bet they're nutritious as well. The ingredient list is pristine in it's simplicity. Great post @haphazard-hstead.
Thanks! It's a good thing that the pine pollen and spruce needles are in there, to balance out that butter and sugar, lol. I hope you get a chance to try pine pollen or those new spruce tips sometime!
I hope I do as well. Thank you @haphazard-hstead.
You're welcome!
Who'd a thunk? Nice post @haphazard-hstead!!! Re-steemed.
We have plenty of pines here in NJ, any worries choosing the wrong type?
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed my cookies and thanks for resteeming. You'll be seeing more pine pollen cookery, too! Every kind has a little different taste. Any of the real pines, in the Pinus genus are fine. The Norfolk Island Pine is not a real pine, though, so don't use that.
I have yet to try anything like this. I have plenty of spruce and pines around here but it's past the pollen stage so I might have to go to the healthfood store or amazon to get the pollen. I will be seeing how good your cookie recipe is though for sure. Thanks for the step by step guide.
I've never bought pine pollen. If you do try using any for cookies, I'd sure like your taste review! The new growth of the spruce has the nice citrus flavor. The needles get more resin flavor, and less citrus, as they get older.
The cookies look yummy and healthy!
They are good! And the only to get them, that I know of, is to make them myself!
Yes, that's really good! ;)