Banana Bread & The Cookies of Appeasement

Once again, our freezer suffered from a surfeit of bananas. Its salvation? Money Saving Mom's tempting "Freezer-Friendly Chocolate Banana Bread" (subbed peanut butter chips for chocolate). I don't know that this bread actually freezes well as it's going straight to work and into hungry librarian bellies, but it looks and smells fabulous. Indeed, its heady perfume made me feel a bit drunk after a while and I had to remove the loaf to a cupboard while I baked The Husband's Cookies of Appeasement.

My co-worker's could not get enough of this bread!

I'd already baked The Husband a beautiful almond bundt cake earlier this week (with homemade raspberry sauce even!), but he was still clearly displeased to come downstairs this morning and discover the delicious baking smells that had finally roused him from his snug nest were not for him. Oh, the betrayal in his eyes! And the scorn he heaped upon my poor, innocent banana bread.

Tender almond sponge with raspberry sauce, yum!

So I baked him cookies -- Betty Crocker's "Black Beauties" -- which allowed me to use up the bag of Betty Crocker double chocolate chunk cookie mix leftover from a work event, so yay for that. The cookies came out well, even though I omitted the nuts (meant to replace them with chopped hazelnuts but forgot) and did not dip the baked cookies in melted chocolate (clearly, I do not love my husband that much). They were best the first few hours out of the oven, when biting down on their crisp exteriors released warm, gooey chocolate centers. I suspect that tomorrow they'll just be a bit chewy and The Husband will lose a little of his ardor for them.

Can't go wrong with a warm cookie

Oh, fickle Eater of Cookies!

Of Bread and Napkins

I've been baking bread and sewing napkins. It sounds quite cozy, doesn't it? Very domestic diva. Very Martha. If only. My coping mechanisms for grief seemingly swing between "eat everything in sight" and "reorganize everything in sight." I've been trying to focus on the latter, because the former is really not doing me any good in the long term. I tackled my sewing room just after Christmas and, amongst the never-started or never-finished projects, I found a neat pile of squared scraps I'd meant to make into napkins three years ago.

So, I sewed napkins. Haphazardly and with no good grace. If you look not-very-closely, you can clearly see how my stitches wander around the hem, mostly keeping in a straight line, but occasionally veering off to visit more exciting parts of the napkin.

Whatev. They're napkins. As long as they wipe my face clean and launder reasonably well, it doesn't matter how perfectly imperfect they may be. And I made them to pack with work meals, so it's not as if I'll ever inflict them on dinner guests. (Admittedly, I would burn them and shoot their ashes into space before I let my mother see one).

So. Napkins. I sewed some.

And, yes, I baked bread. A beautiful traditional white sandwich loaf baked in a pan and everything. It baked up right and looks like "real" bread aisle stuff. None of that crusty misshapen "rustic" nonsense I'd been baking.

How did I get such a perfect loaf? I ... bought a bag of frozen bread dough at the grocery store! Yes, I did. And I'll do it again. Yes, one bag of five frozen unrisen loaves for four dollars is not as economical as scratch bread, but it's waaay cheaper per loaf than the farmhouse-style white I usually buy (when I buy bread) and easier because I can make one loaf at a time and leave the rest in my freezer.

I do love Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, but I feel it doesn't work well for a household of two. One loaf can last us most of the week, but in order to use up the dough before it goes weird, I feel I need to bake bread two or three times in a week and that just isn't happening and I end up wasting dough. (Also, that tub of raw dough takes up a lot of fridge space).

So frozen dough is pretty okay. I thawed and baked it according to the instructions on the bag and it turned out beautifully. The instructions said "bread is done when it pulls away from sides of pan and sounds hollow when tapped lightly" and, by golly, they were spot-on. My lovely loaf did indeed sound hollow when I tapped it. It did take longer for the dough to rise than I anticipated, but that was because my kitchen side wasn't warm enough. Next time, I'll tuck the dough in the corner by the toaster where it's always (suspiciously) warm and see if that loaf rises faster.

(Brushed it with butter as it came out of the oven, because butter makes it better).

Christmas Time is Cookie Time

So, like everyone else, I've been baking cookies. Nothing fancy this year, because I don't have the motivation or drive for fancy, but I yearn for the comfort of cookies. The sheer homeyness of cookies.

The first batch I made, "Spumoni Chunk Cookies," used a recipe I found on bettycrocker.com. The cookies, which used Betty Crocker's sugar cookie mix as a base, were chock full of dried cherries, dry-roasted salted nuts, and white and semisweet chocolate chips. I admit my cookies don't look quite as pretty as the ones on the website, but they still tasted pretty darn fine and my coworkers scarfed them down as if they were manna or ambrosia.

Knowing The Husband would not touch the spumoni cookies with a ten-foot pole, I made him a batch of Crisco's "Ultimate Double Chocolate Chip Cookies" using white chocolate and semisweet chocolate chips. He seemed pleased with them, but said they were best still warm from the oven. Warming them the next day in the microwave worked okay, but nothing is beats cookies fresh from the oven.

Good-bye, bananas! Hello, banana bread!

Oh, sweet banana-y goodness in my oven and so much less banana-y goodness in my freezer! There had been too many bananas in my freezer and I was becoming quite annoyed with their propensity for leaping from the freezer whenever I opened the door to fall upon my poor toes. Yes, I could easily have rearranged the contents of the freezer, but baking banana bread seemed easier. Also, it got rid of half the bananas and that is a good thing as the freezer is not for Infinite Banana Storage.

My go-to banana bread recipe is for "Blueberry Banana Bread" from the defunct Genesis of A Cook. I have very real fears the originating blog will just up and vanish one day, so I'm posting my version of the recipe below.

You'll see I've omitted the streusel topping in my version and that's just a time-saving move on my part. Also, the streusel topping is good, but the cake stands up well on its own and doesn't really need the extra bling.

To get 1 cup of banana, I used 6 thawed frozen organic baby bananas. I just let the frozen bananas sit on the kitchen side for about on hour, then snipped the ends off each banana and squeezed the fruit out like toothpaste from a tube.

Blueberry Banana Bread

Ingredients
2 cups plus 1 Tbsp white whole wheat flour
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 tsp Penzeys baking spice blend
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
½ cup low-fat buttermilk
1 capful Penzeys Mexican vanilla
6 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
1 large egg
1 cup fresh blueberries, rinsed and drained, or frozen blueberries

Directions
Preheat oven to 350°F. In a small bowl or baggie, gently toss the blueberries with 1 tablespoon of flour.

In a medium bowl, blend flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and baking spice. In a large bowl, stir mashed bananas, buttermilk, butter, vanilla, and egg together. Stir flour mixture into banana mixture just until evenly moistened; the batter will be very thick. Gently stir in blueberry mixture.

Glop batter into a greased 8-cup bundt pan or 9x5 loaf pan. Bake bread in preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 60 minutes. Let bread cool in pan on a rack for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and turn over onto rack to cool completely, about 45 minutes.

Best served warm with a big mug of tea.

Consolatory Cupcakes for Breakfast

Over the weekend, The Husband learned a terrible truth -- the prettiest cupcakes are not always the tastiest. He'd gone out Saturday afternoon and acquired sushi and cupcakes, so that I would not need to cook when I came home from work all tired and cranky. The sushi was delicious, but the cupcakes were not. They were yellow cupcakes filled with raspberry-flavored goo and topped with about three inches of pink raspberry buttercream decorated with a mint leaf and fresh raspberry. They were very pretty.

They did not taste good. The cake was dry and crumbly. The filling was the same red goo used to fill donuts -- there was a whiff of artificial raspberry about it, but otherwise it was just overwhelmingly sweet and sticky and red. The vanilla frosting tower was stiff and almost gritty with sugar. Overall, they were simply Unfortunate Cupcakes. I felt sad for The Husband, but it was a lesson he had to learn sometime. You shouldn't buy baked goods based on pretty.

So I woke up Sunday morning with cupcakes and The Husband's happiness on my mind. I had a box of Betty Crocker Fun da-Middles "Chocolate Cupcake with Creamy Vanilla Filling" mix squirrelled away in my baking cupboard since before Christmas. They couldn't possibly come out worse that Saturday night's cupcakes and might make a nice breakfast. Yes, indeed, cupcakes for Sunday breakfast!

It was easy to make this mix as it goes together like every other Betty Crocker cake mix -- eggs, oil, water, cake mix, stir, stir, stir.

Put two tablespoons of cake batter in each cupcake liner.

Add a splodge of filling to each cup.

Top with the remaining batter. The box says it's important to completely cover the filling which was a bit of a bugger for me as my "two tablespoons of cupcake batter" had been a bit on the heaping side and there nearly wasn't enough batter to go 'round in the end.

Since I was using a non-stick pan, I baked the cupcakes at 325°F for 26 minutes and they came out perfect. Not very pretty, mind you, but pretty delicious.

Fluffy and chocolaty with a marshmallowy middle, these cupcakes were significantly better than Saturday's bakery cupcakes. Which is kind of a sad thing to write, really, but think of all the money we'll save.

Of course, now that I've made these cupcakes, I'd like to try making some filled cupcakes from scratch. I'm thinking that all I really need in order to clone these particular Betty Crocker cupcakes is a good chocolate cupcake recipe and a container of marshmallow cream ...

Improv Challenge: Peanut Butter & Jelly

When the two ingredients for this month's Improv Challenge at Frugal Antics of a Harried Homemaker were revealed, I was excited because I had been meaning to make "Peanut Butter and Port Thumbprints" from The Boozy Baker (Running Press, 2010) for many months now. Nut butter, jam, and port all in a cookie? What could be better? Of course, stuff happened and the next thing I knew it was two days before the Improv Challenge and I still hadn't baked those darn cookies! And that is how I found myself baking cookies (and taking pics) when I should have been in bed.

The recipe was pretty straight forward -- bog standard peanut butter cookie recipe plus jam mixed with port. Measure out the dough, roll it into balls, poke a well in it, etc. I used my tablespoon cookie scoop to make sure I ended up with uniformly-sized cookies, but I only managed 15 cookies to a sheet so that was 30 cookies overall, instead of the recipe's 32.

I used the bowl of ½ teaspoon to make the wells and pressed it in deep hoping that would help keep the seedless black raspberry jam in place. And the jam did stay in place ... it's the cookie dough that oozed everywhere.

My cookies came out a bit wonky-looking and I expect that's because I substituted "natural" cashew butter for the peanut butter. The cashew butter lacked the stabilizers I would have found in "normal" peanut butter like Jif and so the cookies kind-of spread all over the place as they baked. Mind you, they tasted really fab -- nutty, crispy, sweet, and jammy. They just look so homely.

I do want to make this cookies again with crunchy Jif to see if they hold their shape better. If they do, I'll make them with blueberry jam and blueberry port for my dad's birthday. I have many memories of my dad sitting on the couch after supper, spreading Townhouse crackers with crunchy Jif, then making a little well in the peanut butter and filling it with jam. Blueberry jam was his favorite, but he's make me raspberry ones. All the jams were made by Mom, of course, but I think Dad will be happy enough with Stonewall Kitchen's "Wild Maine Blueberry Jam" in his cookies as I lack the jam-making skillz.

Soft Cookies, Warm Cookies, Nom, Nom, Nom

In a fit of madness (or was it optimism?) I promised The Husband cookies on a weekend already packed with cooking. I knew I'd need a very basic no-frills recipe that would still be up to The Husband's high standards. After a very brief ohmygodshowmethebestreciperightnow Google search, I settled on a modified version of SheKnows's "Cranberry Chip Cookies."

I used 1 cup Nestle semi-sweet mini morsels, 1 cup Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value white chocolate chunks, and 1 cup Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value dried sweetened raspberries. I also used 1 teaspoon Cook's Pure Red Raspberry Extract instead of the vanilla to give the cookies extra raspberry power and skipped the nuts as I thought there was enough going on in these cookies without them.

These cookies were, we both agree, best eaten warm. Warm, they were soft with slightly melty chocolate and plump, almost gooey raspberries. At room temperature they were pretty fair crisp chocolate chip cookies, but the dried raspberries had resumed their regular raisin-like texture. The Husband does not like raisins or anything that resembles raisins texturally and his cookie consumption sloooooowed right down.

So it was high, ho, off to work the cookies go! And my coworkers seemed perfectly happy to scarf them up. There cookies hit the staff room at 8:20 and, at 10:15, there was nothing left but crumbs. I think there's nothing librarians like more on a Monday morning than free cookies in the staff room. Unless, it's free cake ...

A Mix A Week(ish): King Arthur Flour's Vermont Cheddar Biscuit Mix

First off, I have to warn you that you can't buy this biscuit mix anymore. I don't know when King Arthur Flour stopped selling it, but I can tell you I bought my biscuit mix in 2008 ... and it's "enjoy by" date was December 16, 2009. (Yes, yes, shame on me). Despite being years out of date, these biscuits baked up really fine and I enjoyed eating them. I've always had a great weakness for cheddar crackers and these biscuits tasted exactly like Cheez-Its. Soft, slightly doughy Cheez-Its. Add a little bacon and, I swear, it you would have biscuit-shaped pieces of heaven.

These biscuits were extremely easy to make. I used the drop method, because I wasn't interested in pretty so much as fast, and I add the optional cheese (1 cup Trader Joe's Vintage Reserve Cheddar) and hot sauce (1 teaspoon Huy Fong Foods Sriracha). The biscuit mix already contained powdered Vermont cheddar so the finished biscuits were plenty cheesy and good.

(I feel I should point out that The Husband did not like these biscuits at all. He couldn't get over them tasting, to him, so much like cheddar goldfish crackers while their texture was all soft and biscuit-y).

Good-bye, Mix! Hello, Brownies!

Oh, the shame! The embarrassment! The ... thrift? Last weekend, faced with a Hershey's Baking Bar that was best by September 2010 and that I couldn't bear to throw out because it looked (and tasted) perfectly fine, I whipped up a pan of Hershey's "Quick and Easy Fudgey Brownies." I made the cake-like variation with ½ cup milk and 1½ cups flour, because I intended to serve these brownies with fresh raspberries and whipped cream and cake-like brownies seemed better suited to that pairing than gooey ones.

Definitely recommend this recipe if you're trying to get away from mixes, but still want fast, no fuss brownies. This was an extremely easy recipe anyone could make and it couldn't have taken more than 10 minutes to throw together. It made 24 cake-like brownies, which is far more than I get from most mixes.

Cleaning out the cupboards with ... cookies!

Just like soup, cookies are an excellent way to use up a bunch of odds-and-ends. Last week, faced with multiple open bags of chocolate baking bits, I made a batch of Crisco's "Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies" and there was much rejoicing from The Husband who still thinks that he isn't getting enough cookies. Sir, I have now baked five kinds of cookies since New Year's! That is exponentially more cookie-baking than ever before.

Anyway, to make these cookies I used a combination of Nestle semi-sweet mini morsels, Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate chips, and Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value white chocolate chunks. The total amount of chocolate was the same as what the recipe called for -- just broken down along different lines. It would have been just as easy to sub in butterscotch chips (had any remained from the Scotchie Experiment) or walnuts. I don't recommend adding more chocolate than the recipe calls for unless you want chocolate studded with cookie instead of cookie studded with chocolate.

These were pretty good cookies -- crisp on the outside, tender in the middle, and (surprisingly) very chocolaty without being very sweet. Were they the "ultimate" chocolate chip cookies? While they were an order of magnitude better than Chips Ahoy, they're can't hold a candle to the Jacques Torres French Kiss Cookies I made in July ... big, buttery, bittersweet, yum!

I still have a ridiculous amount of baking chocolate left on hand:

• Hershey's unsweetened baking bar
• Baker's semi-sweet baking chocolate squares
• Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate chips (partial)
• Nestle semi-sweet mini morsels (partial)
• Nestle semi-sweet chunks

Bake moar cookies?

A Mix A Week(ish): Jacques Torres Chocolate Pure Bliss Fudge Brownies

It's been over a month since my last Mix a Week post! I tidied all my mixes away in early December so I would have room for holiday cooking and then just forgot about them! Whoops. Obviously, they popped up again when I inventoried my cabinets for the pantry challenge, but I chose to ignore them because I was doing a pantry challenge not a baking challenge. Then Taste of Hartford started up last week and the pantry challenge fell by the wayside so I had no excuse not to bake and every reason to -- especially as The Husband was making noises about how no-one ever bakes him cookies. To shut him up, I decided to bake the richest, most decadent thing I could think of -- Jacques Torres Chocolate Pure Bliss Fudge Brownies.

I'd baked a batch of Jacques Torres Chocolate French Kiss Cookies last July using a mix I'd bought at King Arthur Flour and, as they were some of the best chocolate chip cookies I had ever eaten, I had high expectations for these brownies ... expectations which were met and surpassed. These were dark, decadent, unrelentingly chocolate-y brownies. Definitely not your every day glass-of-milk-after-school brownies. No, these were grown-up brownies.

And, like many adult pleasures, they took a little time and effort to bring off. I had to melt butter slowly and combine ingredients thoroughly, but gently, and then walk away for a bit. And then come back and add more ingredients. Then the baking. Then the cooling. Then the making of a glaze by melting ingredients and whisking them with other ingredients. Finally, I spread the glaze on the brownies and let them set overnight. That's right, these were next day brownies!

But, they were worth the wait! And I'm an adult so no-one can say boo if I had one for breakfast ...

(According to the box, this mix makes 12 brownies, but I managed to cut the 9" square into 16 pieces and that was just about perfect for us. These are very dark, decadent brownies and I found we didn't need much more than a bite-size piece to satiate our chocolate cravings).

Oatmeal Scotchies -- I Blame Netflix

Ever since Netflix sent us the first season of Warehouse 13 a couple weeks ago, I've been jonesing for oatmeal scotchies. While they're referenced very briefly in the pilot episode, that was just enough to trigger a very persistent craving for what was once a favorite cookie I used to buy, still warm, during my mad, bad college days. Oh, oatmeal scotchies, I didn't even realize I missed you, but now you're all I want to bake.

So (obviously) I baked some! I used Nestle's recipe for "Oatmeal Scotchies" (recipe is on the back of the butterscotch morsels' bag) and, woo, these were tasty cookies. Crispy on the outside with chewy centers and lots of delicious butterscotch bits.

This recipe is supposed to make 48 cookies, but I was a bit heavy-handed with my cookie scoop and only managed 35 large cookies -- of which I took half to work and kept the other half for us. This turned out to be an error on my part as The Husband and I could definitely have used more cookies at home. Cookies, om nom nom!

(My co-workers really enjoyed the cookies and certainly didn't think I brought them too many!)

Cookies, I Baked Them

I had promised The Husband cookies over the long weekend, but ended up using the last of the all-purpose flour in Sunday's silver dollar pancakes. I considered going to the store for flour, but in the spirit of the pantry challenge, it seemed a bit lazy to go buy flour when I had a mostly-full bin of King Arthur Organic White Whole Wheat Flour on hand. Surely I could make cookies with it? I use white whole wheat in roux, cakes, brownies, and quick breads so why not cookies? But could I find a recipe The Husband would like?

Happily, I found a Betty Crocker recipe for "No-Roll Sugar Cookies" which used white whole wheat flour. Since sugar cookies are the most basic, bog standard cookies I figured there was nothing about them The Husband would find displeasing and gave the recipe a go.

And, you know, these turned out to be really lovely cookies -- crisp on the outside, tender on the inside, and richly perfumed with the heady scent of Penzeys Mexican Vanilla. I'm encouraged to try white whole wheat flour in more cookie recipes!

cookies and milk after lunch

I brought Better Homes and Gardens' Very Merry Cookies (Wiley, 2011) home from the library last week and told The Husband to pick out a couple cookie recipes he liked. Ten minutes (and one chapter) later, the book was studded with sticky notes. Among others, The Husband desired "White Chocolate and Raspberry Cookies," "Mini Raspberry and White Chocolate Whoopie Pies," "Strawberry Cheesecake Tartlets," and "Raspberry Cookie Sandwiches." While they all looked delicious, I thought I should start with the simplest recipe -- the one for "White Chocolate and Raspberry Cookies."

Maybe it's because it's been a while since I ate a cookie, but these were really good cookies. And so easy to make! I will definitely be making them again -- perhaps next week? Or is that too soon?

Ingredients: white chocolate morsels, unsalted butter, sugar, baking soda, salt, all-purpose flour, seedless raspberry jam, shortening, red raspberry extract.

The recipe doesn't actually call for red raspberry extract, but I thought a cap full couldn't hurt (and it didn't). Also, the recipe says not to fill and decorate these cookies in advance but to wait until you were going to serve them. I don't know why it says that as I filled and decorated mine as soon as they had cooled and they kept fine for a week in snap/lock container. The trick seemed to be to poke little wells in the cookies' middles as they came out of the oven to hold the melty jam in. I didn't have this brilliant idea until my second cookie sheet came out of the oven, so some of my cookies didn't get wells and I didn't fill them with jam -- just drizzled the white chocolate over them and called them good enough. And they were.

Anyway, the wells keep the jam from running about and, once everything is properly cooled, the chocolate hardens up and there's no reason you can't store these cookies all filled and ready to go. They don't stick to each other. They don't ooze. They just sit in the container and say "Eat me! I'm delicious!"

Mix A Week(ish): King Arthur Flour Cranberry-Sunflower Granola Bars

I bought two boxes of Cranberry-Sunflower Granola Bar Mix last year, because I was on a granola bar kick at the time. Unfortunately, I did not realize how heavily saturated the mix would be with sesame seeds. I'm not as brave (or stupid?) as I once was and try to avoid consuming nuts and seeds when I can, because my body just isn't built for such things. So what should I do with these mixes? Make them and take them to work, obviously!

It was not difficult to make these granola bars -- I made the chewy version using maple syrup, vegetable oil, and 1½ cups dried fruit blend leftover from last year's fruitcake -- and making them couldn't have taken more than 30 minutes, from box to oven. They smelled delicious and looked quite lovely when they came out of the oven. I didn't taste them, but at the rate they disappeared from the staff room, I would guess my coworkers liked them pretty well.

(While I'd planned to make both boxes, my intentions were greater than my motivation and I only made one box to take to work. This worked out fine as one of my coworkers liked them so much I just gave her the other mix when she asked for the recipe).

Easy Autumnal Bundt

Tuesday was National Bundt Day and, to celebrate, I made an apple-walnut bundt using About.com's recipe for "Apple Cake." I substituted King Arthur 100% Organic White Whole Wheat Flour for half the all-purpose and added in a ¼ teaspoon each of ground allspice, mace, cinnamon, and ginger, but otherwise followed the recipe as written.

This bundt bakes at 325°F for 90 minutes and I was worried that it wouldn't bake through at such a low temperature, but the cake tester came out clean at the 90-minute mark and the cake certainly looked done. I let it sit in the bundt pan for about 10 minutes, then slid it out and let it cool on a rack for an hour.

When I bring a cake to work, I usually slice it and arrange it on a platter as unsliced cake will just sit, untouched for hours, on the staff table while sliced cake immediately disappears in an explosion of crumbs and discarded napkins. I presume it's a psychological thing -- no-one wants to cut their own slice lest they be declared greedy guts by their coworkers, but if the cake is already in slices, then it's not their fault?

A Mix A Week: Stonewall Kitchen Peppermint Whoopie Pie

I had planned on baking up a box of King Arthur Flour's Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars this past weekend to keep up with my Mix A Week Challenge, but The Husband complained so bitterly about me not baking anything he could eat (hello? last week's cookies?) that I caved and offered to make up the boxes of Stonewall Kitchen's Peppermint Whoopie Pies mix instead. My offer was not completely altruistic as I realized baking whoopie pies meant I got to try out my new whoopie pie pans!

Aren't they cute? Nonstick, lightweight, and perfectly sized. Stonewall Kitchen sells 'em, but I bought mine off on Amazon -- $13.36 each plus free Prime shipping and no sales tax.

The mix was extremely simple to prepare and assemble. It took five minutes to make each batch of batter and only ten minutes for the cakes to bake. Yes, they did have to cool for about half an hour before I could fill and assemble them, but that gave me plenty of time to make the filling and read a little of Emma Donoghue's Inseparable. Indeed, it took so little time to make these whoopie pies that I ended up making both boxes. That's sixteen peppermint whoopie pies -- enough for The Husband and work.

My only complaint was that the mix did not provide enough crushed peppermint candies to properly coat the edges of all the whoopie pies, but this was easily fixed by crushing up some peppermint candy canes I found in the back of our candy cupboard.

Yes, we have a candy cupboard. Doesn't everyone?

Nine baking mixes down, eight to go!

A Mix A Week: Stonewall Kitchen Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

I'm a little behind with my Mix A Week Challenge so I went a little overboard to compensate and made both boxes of Stonewall Kitchen's Chocolate Sandwich Cookie mix this past weekend. Having made the Vanilla Sandwich Cookie mix last month, I felt I'd had enough practice that I was unlikely to ruin a double batch. And, you know, I did pretty good. Almost creamed an egg shell with the butter (don't ask) and burnt my left hand twice, but those were small troubles.

Remembering the domed vanilla sandwich cookies, I smooshed the chocolate ones down much more firmly and the chocolate ones came out pretty flat. Sometimes, going all "Hulk smash!" is a good thing?

The mix says it makes twenty-four sandwich cookies per box, but I only managed twenty. This is perfectly okay with me as I don't really want a lot of cookies hanging around my kitchen -- half of them went to work with me, anyway, and were all eaten up by the end of the day. Several people asked me for the recipe and I happily pointed them at the Stonewall Kitchen website ... only to find out Stonewall Kitchen doesn't sell this mix, anymore.

Seven mixes down, ten to go!

A Mix A Week: Stonewall Kitchen Vanilla Sandwich Cookies

I let The Husband pick this week's mix for my Mix A Week Challenge and, surprisingly, he went with Stonewall Kitchen's Vanilla Sandwich Cookie mix. Given his great appreciation of last week's red velvet whoopie pies, I thought for sure he'd pick a box of Stonewall Kitchen's Peppermint Whoopie Pie mix, but no, he wanted cookies.

And it was a good choice! This mix made some pretty great cookies -- but then when wouldn't sugar cookies sandwiched together with chocolate buttercream frosting taste good?

My cookies came out more domed than I would have liked, but that was probably because I mashed the dough scoops down to gingerly. The instructions said to press them down gently, and next time (with the chocolate sandwich cookie mix) I will just go all "Hulk smash!" on their doughy little heads to get later cookies.

The mix says it makes twenty sandwich cookies, but I only managed to get fifteen out of it and The Husband has already nommed up three. I guess I will need to hide a few, if I want a share!

Five mixes down, twelve to go!

A Mix A Week: Stonewall Kitchen Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

This weekend, in keeping with my Mix A Week challenge, I made a batch of Stonewall Kitchen's Red Velvet Whoopie Pie mix. Whoopie pies and red velvet everything were incredibly trendy last year and I'm guessing Stonewall Kitchen thought to cash in on two trends with one mix. Certainly, I remember snatching up a box of the mix as soon as I walked into the shop.

Is it a cake mix? Is it prettily packaged in Stonewall Kitchen bling? Is it on sale? I will purchase it and bring it home. Then I will shove it in a cupboard and ignore it for six months. Oh, Stonewall Kitchen, I wish I knew how to quit you!

Other than by developing a terrible food allergy.

The mix was extremely simple to prepare and assemble. It probably took five minutes to make the batter, once the butter was softened, and only ten minutes for the cakes to bake. Yes, they did have to cool for about half an hour before I could fill and assemble them, but that gave me plenty of time to make the filling and do the washing up.

I liked these whoopie pies pretty well. While filled with the anathema that is vanilla butter cream frosting ("true" whoopie pie has a marshmallowy frosting, imho), they were very light and flavorful in an inverted-cupcake way. I was also really pleased with how precisely the recipe worked out -- it really did make twenty-four cakes and enough filling to make exactly twelve whoopie pies. I thought, with my skills, I would surely end up with half an unfilled whoopie pie!

The Husband said that, while these whoopie pies didn't taste that chocolaty, he would be happy to eat a lot of them. Indeed, he went on to say he could eat a lot of them every day -- although that might get a bit samey, so I should probably mix them up with another kind of whoopie pie! Oh, The Husband, he is so lucky I have two boxes of Stonewall Kitchen's Peppermint Whoopie Pie mix waiting to be made up.

Four mixes down, thirteen to go!