The S'mores Cookies

I don't have a picture for these because I was too tired to take one last night and they're all eaten at this point, but I just have to post about them because they were SO yummy!

There was a posting on Tastespotting the other day for S'mores cookies and I thought they sounded delicious and that I should try them. When I looked closely at the recipe though, I wasn't super impressed so I did some hunting around on the interwebs to see what I could find. In every recipe I found they kept talking about how the marshmallows dried out and everything got hard. One person even said she baked the cookies plain and then pushed in the chocolate and marshmallows when they were still hot, but that sounded like too much work too me. All the other recipes used graham cracker crumbs and I decided that was the problem. There began my first attempt at experimenting with baking...

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Ingredients:
3/4 c butter (softened)
1/2 c white sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
1 egg
1 t vanilla
1 3/4 c flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 t baking soda
splash milk
1 c milk chocolate pieces (I used mini Hershey's kissing from the baking aisle)
1 c graham crackers crumbled into small pieces (but not into crumbs)
1 c mini marshmallows

Cream butter and sugars until smooth. Add egg and vanilla, beat until combined. Combine flour, salt and baking soda and add to creamed mixture. Beat thoroughly. I decided to dough was too dry here and added a splash of milk to loosen it up a bit. Fold in chocolate, graham crackers and marshmallows.

Scoop a teaspoon's worth of dough onto parchment covered cookie sheets. The cookies come out best if you shape the dough into balls. Bake for about 13 minutes.

Since this was an experiment, it wasn't perfect and some of the cookies broke on the way from the cookie sheet to the cooling rack. I'm not sure why, they might have needed to cool more or less on the sheet before being moved. It also might have had something to do with the distribution of graham crackers, marshmallows, etc. in the dough lump. It worked out alright though because the broken cookie pieces taste just as good as the whole cookies (if not better).

They were REALLY yummy, especially where the marshmallows melted and caramelized at the edges.

The Chocolate Cups

For the Mother's Day/Birthday Luncheon I made these chocolate cups I saw in a Wilton cupcake book. There were tasty, but a bit of a putchke. I used silicon cupcake cups, but in order to get them out in one piece, I had to spray the cups with non-stick spray before putting the chocolate in, but that made it so the chocolate wouldn't spread around and stick to the sides of the cup. When I finally got them out in one piece they definitely weren't as pretty as the ones in the book. All-in-all, it's done and they were tasty, but I wouldn't do it again, I'd buy the ones in the store for $9.99. I filled them with strawberries and mint, that was good.

The "Too-Many-Birthdays-in-May" Cake

In some sort of evil plot by the gods, pretty much every female I'm related to has a birthday on the days surrounding Mother's Day. My grandmother is May 9th, my sister in law on May 11th and my mother on May 12th. I figure my other brother is only allowed to get married if he finds a woman born on May 10th.

Because of this slightly unnatural phenomenon, I threw a Mother's Day/Birthday luncheon for my 12 closest friends and family members (there were 11 family members and one friend, which doesn't say too much for my social life). I made a coconut cake using the same Paula Dean recipe I used before, but just used coconut milk and no shredded coconut (which made the cake super moist, but not really coconut-y) and frosted it with the most amazing semi-solid marshmallow frosting stuff in the entire world and then decorated it with mini chocolate curls. I decided simple was better and stuck with the single flower.

The Mort Cake

My mother's friend Mort is turning 60 on Thursday so she asked if I would come over and help her with the cake. After a slight communication issue, we ended up with cupcakes. We both decided a regular cake would have been better so we shoved all the cupcakes in a 9X13 lasagna dish and smothered them in buttercream. Then we started decorating. First she asked me if I could make a recumbent bike on the cake. I said no. Finally, we settled on a Mort and his four granddaughters.

Here is the Mort cake in various stages of creation:


Heads and hair, no faces.

Beardy-Baldy McMort!

The second oldest has glasses, just like her grandpa!

Are you ready for your close up, Mr. Hoffman?

The finished product!

And the best part- you can still see the cupcakes!

The Chipotle Mango Cupcakes

I saw these cupcakes yesterday on Tastespotting and they seemed to consist of a variety of flavors no normal person would ever put together. Therefore, they were right up my alley and I decided to make them. They were easy enough to make and came out pretty well. I always tend to err on the side of plenty when it comes to spices, but never having used chipotle chili powder before and it being a brand new bottle, that might have been a mistake, so if you decide to make them, stick to the actual measurements (mine are a tad bit eye-watering). The mango pieces in the batter keep everything moist, but also give them much more of a muffin-y consistency than what I usually think of as cupcakes. Recipe at Coconut & Lime, where their food photos look waaay classier than mine (granted, their's probably weren't taken on a paper towel in a school cafeteria either). Oh, mine also yielded 16, not 12 and I cut up fruit jelly slices for garnish. I also used regular lime instead of keylime in the icing because there were certainly no keylimes at the Shaws on Rte 9.

The Coconut Cake

This cake is for my co-worker Linda's birthday on Wednesday. We are having a potluck early-dismissal lunch and I said I would bring a birthday cake. (I guess this is what teachers did all those days we had early dismissal in school)

I had never made a coconut cake before and the directions kind of lost me when they said to poke holes in each layer with the top of a wooden spoon (see Paula Dean's cake recipe here), but my mother told me it would be OK and she's been making cakes a lot longer than I have, so I went with it. It was OK. I used a straight buttercream frosting instead of Paula's and pressed toasted coconut into it. I used the remaining coconut milk as liquid in the frosting, but it didn't take on the flavor. Next time I might add coconut extract, but this time I was feeling cheap in the supermarket.

Anyway, it looks great and what we scraped off the bottom of the pans tastes incredible. This is the second time in two weeks I've made a cake from scratch, no Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines, I'm feeling pretty good about myself.

I hope Linda likes it!

The "Healthy" Crescent Rolls

Being officially tired of baking, I decided to mix it up for this weekend's party (I am very popular). This came to me last night when I was trying to think of something to make that would be yummy and EASY.

I bought a bunch of asparagus and some green beans since I was informed that not everybody throwing the party likes asparagus. I decided to blanch the veggies before baking so they wouldn't be too firm or burn in the oven. Then I spiraled each stalk/bean with crescent roll dough from the refrigerator section (picking up a trend? I think my mixer is loney) and rolled each one in parmesan cheese. I baked them according to the directions on the dough tube (and the oven stayed on the whole time!)

All in all it was super easy and pretty fun. And they are DELICIOUS!


pre-baking

Stalks and Beans

Just beans