Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

Hi all!

Its been forever since I last posted, but I had some time today and thought I'd share some of what I baked up over my term break a couple weeks ago. I saw this particular recipe on Bakerella a while back and it had been on my "to bake" list for quite some time. I finally got around to baking them for a birthday party for one of my school friends. I will definitely use any excuse to eat something red velvet :) I followed these directions exactly and didn't have any problems with the recipe itself. The only thing I had difficulty with was that I tried to dye the cookies purple for a more spring theme. I thought that if I just added blue to the already red colored batter, they would come out purple. They didn't. They turned brown and looked like regular chocolate cookies (a little bit of purple showed through if the light hit them right). Oh well--they still tasted really, really good. Here's the recipe:

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies:

Cookies

Ingredients:
1 Box red velvet cake mix (any cake mix will work)
1/2 Cup butter, softened to room temperature
2 Eggs

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix ingredients until combined.
Drop spoonfuls of cookie batter onto baking sheet about two inches apart.
Bake for 10-12 minutes.
Cool.

**Tip: For consistent size cookies, use a 1.5 inch small ice cream scooper when placing batter on the baking sheet. The finished cookie size will be about 3 inches wide.

Cream Cheese Filling

Ingredients:
1/2 Cup butter, softened to room temperature
1 8 oz. Package cream cheese, softened to room temperature
1 1lb. Box of confectioner’s sugar
1 tsp Vanilla

Directions
In a mixer, cream butter, cream cheese and vanilla.
Gradually add sugar and mix until smooth.

**To assemble, spoon a small amount of frosting on the flat side of one cookie. Take another cookie and press together until frosting is flush with the edge. Makes about 24 cookies or 12 cookie sandwiches.

Anyway, I highly recommend these cookies! Tasty and easy to make--what could be better? Sorry I don't have any process pictures, I was so busy cooking a bunch of stuff that day that I only was able to get the final product.

Hope everyone had a happy Mother's Day! I know my sisters and I are really missing our mom today, but are so very grateful for the other wonderful women in our lives!

It's Christmas in 834!

To start, a little explanation... 834, said "eight three four" not "eight thirty four," is what we (Shannon, Jocelyn, any other friends, and I) call our apartment. Over the past year and a half, it's become more of a name than an apartment number.


We've been waiting for Christmas, for what seems like months. It's all of our favorite time of year. Family, friends, presents, cookies, fudge, decorations, and NO SCHOOL! Classes have been coming down hard on all three of us for the past few weeks, but we finally found some time to get in the Christmas spirit! We spent all of yesterday transforming 834 into a winter wonderland. Now, recently we have noticed that a few balconies around the complex are decorated, but most consist of half-ass strung lights looped around the railing. There is one balcony, though, that looks professionally done. Our goal was to, and I mean this in the least Grinch way, have our balcony kick all the other balconies' butts! We totally did, by the way.

View from the ground

A little blurry, but from down the street a bit.

We also put up our tree, although, this picture is from last year!

Aside from decorating, we filled 834 with the aroma of freshly baked cookies! THREE different kinds, to be exact. I also decided to add in a treat I haven't had in a really long time, but remember from when I was a kid... 5 minute fudge! 

We had homemade chocolate chip cookies...

Sugar cookies...

Red Velvet cookies...

And only one mishap!

She's notorious for breaking things, so we shouldn't be too surprised she's holding half of a measuring cup.

Okay, procrastination over. Time to get back to the books!

Merry Christmas!!

Blondies?

Hey family,
Today was my "free" day from having to be at school or at clinic, so I was at home all day grading papers for a class I'm TAing and doing homework. In particular, I was practice scoring the Rorschach Inkblot test for a projective assessment class I'm taking (basically, finding some sort of meaning behind what a person percieves in an ambiguous blob of ink). Personally, I find this test a little silly; however, I wonder if it means something that all day I kept seeing brownies, cupcakes, and cookies in all of the blots :) I find this next pic to be pretty funny myself, but that may just be the psychologist nerd in me coming out.



Okay, okay. This picture is actually kind of gross, but--it does look almost exactly like one of the blots from the test. And, I'd still eat it. :)



Anyway, all of this thinking about sweets, made me really want to make something sweet. So, I found a recipe for Blondies (what I thought were Blonde Brownies) on Smitten Kitchen's blog. I don't think I've actually eaten a Blonde Brownie since I was a little girl; however, I remember my mom making some really good ones. Plus, this was one recipe I already had all the ingredients to at my house! So, I followed it. The whole thing was super simple (seriously, the most time consuming part was melting the butter) and they came out tasting really good--but, they did not remind me at all of the blonde brownies my mom used to make. In fact, they tasted more like chocolate chip cookies. I thought something was fishy when the batter came out more like cookie dough instead of brownie batter. So, my question for you is: Do any of you happen to know what may have gone wrong? Or, happen to have the recipe my mom used to make hers?

I have already scavenged through her old recipe box in Katy, and found that a lot of the good recipes she used to make were unfortunately never written down and must have been from her memory. But I'm hoping she passed this along to someone. Or, even if its not hers, if someone would be willing to share their own recipe for Blonde Brownies. Anyway, here's the recipe for these "Blondies" and a couple pics to follow.

Blondies (Infinitely Adaptable)
Taken from Smitten Kitchen (Originally adapted from How to Cook Everything)
Ingredients:
8 tablespoons butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla or 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
Pinch salt
1 cup all-purpose flour

Directions:
1. Butter an 8×8 pan (double the recipe to fit in 9 X 13 pan)
2. Mix melted butter with brown sugar – beat until smooth. Beat in egg and then vanilla.
3. Add salt, stir in flour. Mix in any additions (below).
4. Pour into prepared pan. Bake at 350°F 20-25 minutes, or until set in the middle. I always err on the side of caution with baking times — nobody ever complained about a gooey-middled cookie. Cool on rack before cutting them.

Further additions, use one or a combination of:
• 1/2 to 1 cup chopped nuts, toasting them first for even better flavor
• 1/2 to 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1/2 teaspoon mint extract in addition to or in place of the vanilla
• 1/2 cup mashed bananas
• 1/4 cup bourbon, scotch or other whiskey; increase the flour by one tablespoon
• 2 tablespoons of espresso powder with the vanilla
• Stir 1/2 cup dried fruit, especially dried cherries, into the prepared batter
• Top with a vanilla butter cream or chocolate peanut butter cream frosting


Had to get my cute little Hendrix in there.


See, they really just look like cookies. What gives?