Chocolate Chip Cashew Butter Cookies

I really have been feeling the cookie itch lately. Plus, cookies are way easy to unload on others once you have had the two or three that you have actually been hankering for. I liked these, but probably would have skipped the chips, strangely enough. The cashew butter really made a great cookie that was much more subtle than a regular peanut butter cookie and I think it would have stood on its own just fine. I followed this recipe, swapping cashew butter for the pb.

Next time I will definately skip the chips, maybe sub in some nice roasty cashews or toffee bits..... hmmm toffee bits.....

Cranky with a chance of snickerdoodles

I have been in an awesome mood, and by awesome, I mean an utterly cranky; borderline fightn' mood. So it is awesome in how in awe I am of my magnificent grumps.

Regardless I am still having my love affair with my new kitchen aid, so when the hubbs was asked "chocolate chip or snickerdoodle?" he actually responded "snicker baby snicker" this was via text, lest you think he is some sort of beatnik cool cat. Also posed with that question I think the hubbs is the only one that would immediately go for the doodle. I like them very much, but who passes up chocolate chip? But, I digress.....

I halved the recipe from here which is pretty much a very standard snickerdoodle. I have found very few variations. I did however make my cookies out of tablespoon size balls, hee hee balls, and the turned out to be rather robustly sized cookies. They were a good treat for my snickerdoodles loving husband and a nice surprise for my partners in snowy-day-happy-hour crime.

Oatmeal Blondies

With an impromptu game night on the horizon, I couldn't come empty handed.....
WARNING: these will make your house smell like a dream come true- eff scented candles.

Oatmeal Blondies
1 C butter, melted
2 C dark brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
2 t vanilla
1 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
couple pinches salt
1 C oats

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 13/9/2 pan.
- Whisk together sugar and butter. Add eggs and vanilla and give it another whisk.
- Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt mix well. When combined add oats.
- Pour into the pan and smooth out well, bake for 30-35 minutes and a toothpick comes out clean.

In this case wrap up and bring to friends house for munching....

Apple Craisin Quick Bread

I received a surprise call last night. The Hubbs was going to get to come home for the weekend, I got a bit of a break from being a campaign widow! I preparation for that and to busy myself as to not fall asleep before the debates and before he arrived; since I would have to let him in the house (yes, yes, I "may" have locked myself out of the house which ultimately involved our door getting re-keyed in the past few days, but that is neither here, nor there....). Back to the bread, I adapted this from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook which is probably an underutilized resource in my cookbook collection.

Apple Craisin Quick Bread
1 1/2 cup unbleached flour
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1/4 t nutmeg
1 C sugar
1 C shredded apple (I used one MASSIVE honey crisp apple, I would venture that you would need at least 2 hearty apples or 3-4 very small-you loose volume while shredding)
1/4 oil
1 C Craisins (raisins, currants, chopped apricots, etc would be great as well)

Grease a larger loaf pan 8x4 or 9x5 and preheat oven to 350.
Combine dry ingredients in a medium bowl and set aside
In another bowl combine wet ingredients and add dry to it in a few batches and stir till moistened, then fold in the craisins.
Pour batter in the prepped loaf pan and place in the oven. Cook for about 55-60 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

I added a bit of cinnamon sugar that we had in the cupboard on the top for funsies. According to the Hubbs this was a nice treat to come home to.

Oatmeal Cranberry Cupcakes with Rich Chocolate Glaze

For this months Cupcake Hero, bakers choice using two of the ingredients from the previous challenges, I opted for cranberry and cocoa. I hoped that these would be like a tasty cupcake variation on dark chocolate covered dried cranberries that I have been known to cram in my face from time to time.

Oatmeal Cranberry Cupcake
Adapted from Cupcake Project's Cinnamon Raisin Cupcake with Maple Glaze

1/2 C butter (1 stick) softened
1 1/2 C sugar
3 eggs
1 t vanilla extract

8 oz unsweetened applesauce
1/2 C cider vinegar
1 1/2 C oats
1 C flour
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 t cinnamon
1 t pumpkin pie spice
1/2 t salt
2 C dried cranberries

Cream butter and sugar.
Beat in eggs, one at a time.
Add vanilla extract, applesauce, and vinegar.

In a separate bowl, whisk together oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, and salt.
Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, a little bit at a time.
Fold in the dried cranberries.
Fill cupcake liners 3/4 full.

Bake at 350 F for around 25 minutes or a toothpick comes out clean. I ultimately ran out of cupcake liners so I also made a few bigger mini cakes in ramekins, those took a bit longer.

Rich Chocolate Glaze
2 C confectioner's sugar
1/3 C cocoa powder
1/4 C low fat sour cream
1/3 C milk (what ever you have on hand)
1/2 t vanilla extract

Toss the whole shebang in a bowl and combine well with an electric mixer. This is thick, but loose enough to pour on your cuppies if you prefer.

These turned out tastier than I thought they would and would definitely use variations of this in the future.

Daring Bakers- Chipotle Chocolate Éclairs

The August Daring Bakers challenge came from Tony Tahhan and MeetaK.

I would love to say that my first Daring Bakers attempt went splendidly and without a hitch….alas I cannot. First, I had to enlist the help of wonderfully generous friend on account of the busted wrist. These were not a one-handed project. So we set aside a nice Saturday and got crackin.

We started with the standard Pâte à Choux and piped out our “chubby fingers”, my still slightly swollen fingers peeking out of my cast served as an excellent example. As we piped and they cooked we quickly turned into giggling children muttering things about wieners. In the midst of a very mature conversation we probably took them out a touch to early and most of them sank and looked like this
Some maintained their puffy namesake so we forged on…. To the chocolate pastry cream! We used the provided recipe with one addition that we all really, really enjoyed; to the cooling pastry cream we added about 2-3 tablespoons of the zesty delicious goo that comes in the can of chipotles. In my humble opinion this addition really stepped up the filling, prior it was kinda just an eggy-chocolatly-unremarkable filling, after there was a bit more depth and contrast.

We opted to use a Mark Bittman recipe for dark chocolate glaze out of How to Cook Everything. This is where things got ugly…..on paper sounded like it would whip up in a jiff and be wonderful. Not.so.fast. This is what we got.
The wheels were quickly coming off this bus. We decided to assemble the few puffy shells and coat the top with simple melted bittersweet chocolate. See not so bad.
The rest met a different fate. Being virtually unfillable, the chipotle chocolate éclair cake was born!
The “shells” were split, the really ugly pieces layered on the bottom of a 9/13 pan, filling smeared on top, and then covered with the nicer éclair bits and a bit of melted chocolate. I have to admit I am really not that fond of éclairs, these however actually benefited from some time in the fridge and definitely tasted better the next day after the cake sat-up a bit.
Hopefully I will have two working hands for the September challenge!

Red White and Blue Cupcake Challenge

Ok, well, more like pink, white, and purple….. Everything started out red white and blue, does that count?

In the midst of moving into a new house, becoming a first time homeowner, and taking a midterm for this blasted masters degree, I said why not make cupcakes. People got to eat right? So the golden cake with blueberry filing and strawberry frosting were born. I can say that these really surprised me; I was a bit apprehensive about the filling. Let me tell you it was amazing and thank you to Mary at Shazam in the Kitchen for the recipe. We had some left over and actually had to remove it from the house so that my husband and I did not just subsist on frosting via spoon for multiple days.

Golden Cake with Blueberry Filling and Strawberry frosting

Golden Cake (Adapted from a few recipes, to suit what was in my dwindling kitchen reserves)
2 ¾ cups flour
2 ½ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt
2 sticks (8oz) unsalted butter, at room temp
2 cups sugar
5 large eggs
1 ½ tsp vanilla
1 cup light sour cream
1/3 cup skim milk

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and set up your cupcake pan/papers.
2. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, and salt.
3. Cream together the butter and sugar till fluffy
4. Add eggs one at a time and mix thoroughly between each one followed by the vanilla.
5. Add milk/sour cream alternating with dry ingredients.
6. Fill about ¾ full and bake about 20 minutes or golden and toothpick comes out clean

Blueberry Filling (Shazam in the Kitchen)

½ cup (4oz) unsalted butter at room temperature
3 cups confectioners sugar
½ tsp vanilla
1 cup blueberries

1. Dump the blueberries in a small sauce pan on the stove and simmer till the berries start to explode and get syrupy. Chill for at least a half hour in the fridge.
2. Cream butter and sugar till smooth and creamy.
3. Add vanilla and blueberries


Strawberry Frosting (from Crazy About Cupcakes)

6 Tbsp. unsalted butter at room temp
8 oz cream cheese (I used Neufchatel)
4 ½ cups confectioners sugar (I went a bit less)
¾ cup fresh strawberries sliced

1. Mix cream cheese and butter together.
2. Add in confectioners sugar a bit at a time.
3. Mix in strawberries. The berries will be smashed up a bit but still visible in the frosting and it will turn a wonderful pink color.


To fill these I opted for the cone method and it worked like a dream. Plus we got to make super tiny cupcake tastes with the nubbin that gets cut off. Our wonderful and amazing friends that helped us move reaped the benefits of these delicious cakes! Thanks again guys!

the hubbs b-day feed

Admittedly this is another tardy (hee hee, tardy) post. My husband birthday was about a week and a half ago and to celebrate this day I tried my hand at a layer cake and a John Barrymore Onion Pletzel. Specifically a chocolate cake with cannoli filling and a coffee buttercream.

I used my super-trusty, go-to "why would you ever make a cake out of box ever again" chocolate cake recipe. The recipe is the Moosewood Collective's vegan chocolate cake It is a snap to put together, literally just dry into wet. I can attest that it is virtually impossible to mess up always tastes wonderful and can be enjoyed by all. The cannoli filling was simply some ricotta sweetened with confectioners sugar. Let me tell you it was pretty hard not to just eat the entire bowl and claim to our guests that 3-layer cakes generally do not have anything between the layers.

The coffee buttercream was a bit of an experiment and lessons were learned. 1. making frosting of any sort on a 90-some-odd degree day makes things a little drippy. 2. Anything with 3 sticks of butter as a primary ingredient will return to a sold butter consistency when cooled. This was a recipe from The Marshmallow Fluff Cookbook. Basically the powdered sugar is replaced with fluff in this buttercream. It comes together like a dream and did not taste overwhelmingly of marshmallow. Toss in a little espresso powder dissolved in a bit of hot water, and tada! The cute little decorations are the new fancy-schmancy M&M's.

The John Barrymore Onion Pletzel was my first attempt at any of the sweet dough's from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It was good, but I am not totally sure that it was good enough to justify the sheer amount of butter involved. All in all it made for a tasty and special breakfast when paired with a couple of fried eggs.

Not as boring as you would think.....

I have a serious soft spot (or crunchy, if you will) for crackers. They are tasty, munchable, and portable. The drawback is that you can eat 7 million without batting an eye and they are often filled with crud that 1. does not need to be in them and 2. is really not that good for you. That said, I decided to make my own. Not too shabby.

I tweaked and based this on fairly traditional cracker recipes. Very simple, not a lot of action but ultimately a pretty tasty ending

I mixed about 1 1/4 cups flour with a hearty amount of cumin, a few shakes of chili power, and salt.


With a nice glug of olive oil and enough water to bring the dough together, it will form a nice firm dough. This ball yielded two trays of crackers.


I rolled the dough out directly on parchment with a bit of flour trying to make it nice and even and thin. Score/cut the dough in to the shape you desire and give each one a nice poke with a fork and a sprinkle of coarse salt.


These babies get popped in a 400 degree oven for around 15 minutes, till they are crispy and smell nice and toasty.


All in all they are not the buttery, transfatty crackers you will get at your local grocer, but they definitely held up to some homemade hummus or a soft cheese. Now I just need to test other flavors to mix in.....

Fluffernutter Whoopie Pies

This adaptation started out as an all-call to the usual suspect who sample or reap the feed benefits of my cooking and baking projects. One of the responses stated anything chocolate and peanut butter.... and the fluffernutter whoopie pie was born.
The recipe for whoopie pies that I have used in the past is from The Marshmallow Fluff Cookbook. A very fun look at the history of fluff, facts and figures, and recipes.

I took the traditional whoopie pie recipe, but swapped out the filling for the fluffernutter frosting also found in the book. They were a hit. They had their debut at a cookout and there was nary a pie left!
Fluffernutter Whoopie Pies

1 egg
1/3 c. vegetable oil
1 c. sugar
2 c. unsifted all-purpose flour
1/3 c. unsweetened cocoa
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 c. milk
1 tsp. vanilla

Heat oven to 350 F. Grease two large cookie sheets and set aside. In a large bowl with mixer at medium speed beat egg and vegetable oil. Gradually beat in sugar and continue beating until pale yellow in color. In another bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. In a measuring cup combine milk and vanilla. Add flour and milk mixtures alternately to eggs and sugar, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Drop by tablespoons onto cookie sheet. These will spread a lot, so make 6 cakes per sheet at a time. Bake about 5 minutes or until top springs back when lightly touched with finger. Remove to wire racks to cool. When cool, use filling (see below) and two cakes to make sandwiches.

Fluffernutter Frosting

1 c. Marshmallow Fluff
1/2 c. peanut butter
1/3 c. butter or margarine, softened
1/4 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/3 c. confectioners’ sugar
2 T. milk

In small bowl with mixer at low speed, combine Fluff, peanut
butter and butter until blended. Increase speed to medium. Beat
in confectioners’ sugar, alternately with milk, adding just enough
milk to make frosting smooth and spreadable. Beat in vanilla.

That looks like magazine bread!

Those were the exact words uttered by my hubbby after I mentioned that this particular loaf of bread was turning out pretty nice. This is the simple loaf from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. If I do say so myself it is a nice lookin loaf.

Putting off work......

In an effort to not do school work, while also not feeling "idle" I made some feed today. While running errands this morning it was decided that a friend would make some burgers for dinner, so I offered to try my hand at making some rolls. I used the base recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. They turned out rather hearty an big but they were a hit with the burgers.

Here are a few before and afters.
Sorry that there are no giant burger pics, but the camera didn't make it to the patio.



After some relaxing and eating of meats, we succumbed to the rain and packed it in. I saw a post on PheMOMenon! about black and white cookies and it peaked my intrest a bit. I have a very special place in my heart for these cookies. They are not my favorite to eat, nor to make, in fact I haven't made them in almost nine years... The last time I made them was a goofball effort for my now hubby's birthday the first year that we were dating. He is a transplanted Long Islander and grew up munching on black and white cookies. As a surprise I decided that I would make a GIANT black and white cookie (a bit bigger than a record/garbage can lid) and ship it to him our first summer apart during college. Ultimately I successfully made and shipped the massive cookie in time and unbroken for his birthday. Needless to say they remind me of the early days of my relationship with him.

I actually had all of the ingredients on hand so I decided to make the cookies. The recipe came together very easily, quickly, and got a prompt and frosting filled thumbs up from the hubby.