Carrot Cake Cookies

Modified from Cream Puff Murder by Joanne Fluke

1 cup butter, softened

2 cups white sugar

3 eggs, beaten

1 cup unsweetened applesauce

2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

4 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp salt

20 oz can of crushed pineapple (well drained....like seriously, get as much as you can out)

1 cup raisins (golden is recommendation, I think I used regular as that's what I had)

1 cup chopped walnuts (you could also do all raisins or all nuts....I was making this for my father so I used nuts, if I was making it for ourselves, I'd skip them)

3 1/2 cups flour

3 cups finely grated carrots

1 cup coconut (chopped more than bag...I didn't use and threw in some extra carrots...I'm just going to leave it out completely next time, no extra carrots)

Beat butter, sugar and eggs into thoroughly incorporated. You want smooth and fluffy. You actually measure your appleasauce then pat it a little with a paper towel as you want to cut down on extra liquid. Add to bowl and mix. Mix in vanilla. Blend in baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Make sure dough is smooth after mixing.

Blend in flour in increments (they did the next step before this, by I wanted to do this in the mixer and the other by hand, so I flipped them).

Mix in pineapple, raisins and walnuts (I did this all by hand). Mix in carrots (and coconut if you use it).

Cover and chill for at least two hours.

Preheat to 350 when ready to bake. Drop the dough by spoonfuls onto cookie sheet (if yours stick, use parchment paper, I was fine). Bake for about 12 minutes.

They gave a recipe for cream cheese frosting that I didn't use (I don't frost cookies).

Makes 10 dozen cookies (size dependent, of course....)