Happy 3rd Birthday Billa!

My daughter celebrated her third birthday on Monday.  Cue the sniffling and crying...she's getting to be so big!

Sybilla enjoying one of her fave foods, "cheese pops" while watching Busytown on Netflix.  They're actually Cheetos Brand Natural White Cheddar Puffs (those things are like crack...super addictive!)

We've decided to hold her birthday party about two weeks later than her birthday, but we wanted her friends at school to celebrate anyway.  I whipped up some cookies for goodie bags and some homemade green and blue oreos for the kiddos to munch on after lunch for a mini party.

Here are the cookies I made for the goodie bags.  The kids love these things so much!

The goodie bag cookies were simply sugar cookies that I decorated in Scooby colors: aquamarine, lime green, and orange.  I had thought about getting crazy and making some Mystery Machines or trying to recreate Scooby's head, but I ended up not doing it.  To be honest, it was way too much work for a small of three and two year olds.  I think the shapes I chose ended up being much more kid-friendly.

These were the cookies I made for the kids to eat at the mini party. The flower one I made special for Sybilla.  I dyed them to coordinate with the goodie bags and the Scooby color theme!

I fell in love with a recipe for homemade oreos at my friend Anna's cookie party that uses cake mix, oil and eggs.  It's super easy and pretty darn tasty too!  The original recipe is here at The Sister's Cafe, where Anna snagged it, but instead of using the devil's food cake recipe, I used white cake mix and then dyed the batter in different colors.  It was easy and as you can see above, it made quite the impact!  Did I mention that it was easy? [wink]

The dots were really a test to see how the doughs would bake together.  They actually looked kinda cute!

Like, what is it Scoob!?  Tie dye and flowers, oh my!

The pictures above show you the different things you can do with the batter.  It's pretty thick once it's all mixed up, which made me think that I could maybe roll it out like cookie dough.  Yeah, not so much.  It's a little too oily for my taste when rolling (probably because it was white cake mix instead of chocolate...I bet the cocoa powder has something to do with it) and it stuck like crazy to the counter.  It also didn't hold the shape very well when I tried to peel it up off my floured surface.  Grrr.  Either way, the cookies came out alright in the end and there were none left when I picked up Billa from school.

Homemade Oreos

1 package cake mix, white or devil's food
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil (reduce this amount just slightly for white cake mix)

food coloring as needed

1. Heat oven to 300-350F degrees and line baking sheets with parchment.
2. Add oil, eggs and coloring (if using) to cake mix and blend together. 
3. Roll dough into balls (a little larger than a quarter). Place on greased cookie sheet and press down gently. 
4. Bake for 8 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool on sheet for a few minutes before moving them to a cooling rack. 
5. To assemble the cookies, add a small dollop of filling into the center of one cookie.  Place another cookie similar in size on top of the filling.  Lightly press them together, working the filling evenly to the outsides of the cookie. Continue this process until all the cookies have been sandwiched with cream.

Cream Cheese Filling
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1 block of cream cheese (8 oz)
3 - 4 cups powdered sugar (depending on desired consistency)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Cream butter and add cream cheese and mix well. Add powdered sugar slowly until you reach your desired consistency.

Some food for thought...

• If you use a white cake mix and color it, use a bit more color than you think you might need.  As the cookies baked, the colors seemed to fade a bit.  Boo :o(
• I didn't realize this until it was too late, but you need to watch these like hawks to prevent too much browning on the edges.  The sugar in the batter caramelizes as it cooks, giving the brown color.  I think the best way to combat this is to bake them low and slow: cook at 300F for about 12 minutes and go from there.  I baked mine at 325 for 10 minutes and I think that was too much.
• Chilling the dough will work wonders if you're going to attempt shapes like the flower.  Try to handle it as little as possible too, so that it doesn't 'melt' in your hands.
• If you wanted to jazz these puppies up even more, try adding sprinkles!  You can also (gently) swirl the doughs together to create tie dye, or place small balls together like the flower to create other shapes.  The possibilities are endless!
• A recipe note: in order to make sure that the batters were evenly divided, I measured the bag of mix before splitting it, then split the eggs and oil down the middle.  You could just mix the entire batch together and then separate and color, but due to the thickness of the dough, that may actually be harder.

I hope this gives you some ideas for your own homemade Oreo versions!  And of course, a big happy birthday to my little munchkin...I love you, Sugary!

Happy Baking,
Kelly

Portfolio: Red Velvet Whoopies and "2" Sugar Cookies

My daughter and I had the joy of attending the birthday party for the daughter of a dear friend of mine this past weekend.  Abby Lu turned two and her mom planned a cookie themed party for the little munchkin.  Anna is a corporate event planner and she always has the most wonderful and fun ideas for birthday parties!  She blogs about that and her crafty activities frequently, and I just love, love, love reading about all the fun stuff she does.

Anna had a milk moustache photo station for everyone to take their pictures.  Here's me and Billa!

She planned on having quite a few cookies for the party and asked me to bake up some red velvet whoopie pies and some sugar cookies in the shape of the number 2 for Abby's party.  Abby apparently adores red velvet and I was excited to try a new recipe for them at the party.  I have a recipe that is pretty good, but after baking some chocolate whoopies for my mom's birthday, I wanted to tweak the chocolate recipe and see if I couldn't duplicate the texture with red velvet.  They came out fantastic!

The cookie buffet...so many tasty treats!

For the number 2's, I did half of them with solid cookie monster blue and the other half with blue sprinkles.  Doing these brought back memories of my daughter's second birthday last year, in which I did a Sesame Street theme and gave away sugar cookie S's, 2's, and Elmo's as favors. 

My daughter and I enjoyed visiting with lots of our friends that we had not seen in some time.  The party was so much fun because we got to eat my favorite thing: cookies!  They also happen to be one of Abby's favorite things too!

Abby Lu and Billa swinging on the swings

Happy 2nd birthday Abby Lu!  May you have many more!

Happy baking,
Kelly

Recipe: Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

Fall is my favorite season for several reasons: I can wear sweaters, the brutal Texas heat has finally abated, college football has arrived, and I can finally bake with pumpkin!  We all know I am thoroughly obsessed with whoopie pies right now, and it wouldn't be fair to the almighty pumpkin if we didn't include it on the list of flavors for whoopie pies.

I searched all over the place for different recipes using pumpkin in whoopie pies, and I decided that I liked this one from Rachael Ray the best.  Other recipes call for vegetable oil, but I like the flavor and richness that the melted butter provides in this recipe, plus they don't feel so greasy.  Pumpkin is to cream cheese frosting like peanut butter is to jelly, so fill these little guys with a cream cheese frosting for a super rich and decadent fall delight.  Thanksgiving will never be the same!

One more thing...we all know I love my spice, so of course I added an 1/8 tsp of chipotle powder to the spice mix.  I gotta tell ya, it was an amazing flavor combination.  Throw me on a desert island and the two things I'd ask for would be chipotle powder and duct tape.  If you're a little hesitant to try it, don't worry.  The heat is very minimal and subtle, but it dovetails nicely with the pumpkin and the cream filling. 

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies
1 stick (4 oz) butter, melted
1 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 TBSP pumpkin pie spice
1/8 tsp chipotle powder (optional)
1 2/3 cups flour

1.  Preheat your oven to 350F and line a couple of cookie sheets with parchment paper.
2.  In a large bowl, whisk together the melted butter and brown sugar until smooth.
3.  Whisk in the eggs, pumpkin puree, pumpkin pie spice, vanilla, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
4.  Using a rubber spatula, fold in the flour.
5.  Pipe or spoon the batter onto your cookie sheet, evenly spaced.  Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until golden brown.  Allow to cool before spreading filling between two cookies.

Filling
8 oz of cream cheese
2-3 cups powdered sugar
1 container of Marshmallow Fluff

1.  Whip the cream cheese until soft.
2.  Add in the powdered sugar in small amounts until the frosting is thick.
3.  Fold in the marshmallow fluff; don't overbeat!
4.  Spread or pipe the filling in between two pumpkin cookies and smoosh together.
5.  Serve up and enjoy!

Some food for thought...

• You can use either fresh or canned pumpkin puree.  I try to pick my battles wisely...so I use canned, but if you have the time and energy to use fresh, go for it!
• You can use regular whoopie pie filling instead if you choose.  I strongly encourage you to find flavors you love and experiment!
• I love parchment paper because it means easy cleanup, but trying to pipe thick batter on top of it can be frustrating when it moves around.  Try wetting the backs of the corners with a little bit of water and pasting it down to the cookie sheet.  Cooking spray also works well!
• I like that Rachael's recipe uses pumpkin pie spice for ease; if you don't have any on add, just do a mixture of 2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ginger, and 1/2 tsp nutmeg.
• On portion sizes:  Rachael's recipe and method makes about a dozen large cookies.  I personally prefer to make smaller ones so that I don't feel as guilty about eating more than one of something so rich and decadent.  This batch made a little over two dozen 1.5" sized cookie sandwiches. 
• One tester's comments on Rachael's site mentioned that she felt the cookies were too large and too high (domed).  To combat this, you can dip your (clean!) finger into some water and smooth the tops down a bit.  You can also make the portions smaller by piping smaller amounts.  This will help them bake a bit more evenly.

Dip your finger into some water and pat the points of your dough down so they are more rounded.  If some are too tall you can spread them out using this method too.  The oven will take care of the rest!

Happy baking,
Kelly

America Tastes Sweet!

I hope you all had a lovely 4th of July!  We enjoyed a relaxed afternoon with our friends and neighbors and ate hamburgers, ribs, sausage, and hot wings. It was good times!  As usual, I brought dessert and I whipped up a humdinger of one!

My northern friends, you're probably more familiar with these than me and my southern compatriots, so forgive me for being a little loopy over them, but I am in LOVE with whoopie pies!

And so is my daughter:

Along with the rest of her friends:

These were red velvet flavored, which I dyed half of them blue and the other half red, and slathered cream cheese frosting between the two.  Heavenly!  Whoopie pies rock.  Cupcake, you're dead to me. Over.

In addition to whoopie pies, I created this little free form tart for further Fourth festivities with my folks and frere (I love alliteration):

Behold the Galette of Glory! 

It's a strawberry and blueberry galette which I further decorated by laying stripes and stars on top from pie dough.  My folks had some dried orange peel in a jar that complimented the fruit nicely, and topped off with some vanilla bean ice cream, it was delightful after a heavy meal of BBQ chicken and pizza. 

I tell you what, America never tasted so sweet.  And a very heartfelt thank you to the men and women in the service who fight each day to keep it that way.   Happy birthday America!

Happy Baking,
Kelly