Derek's Oatmeal Chocolate Coconut Almond Tasties

Derek, our favorite Baltimore friend, had his 24th birthday last weekend, so I sent him some cookies. He said he wanted something with maybe some chocolate or coconut or almonds, so I made him cookies with all three! I found this recipe after a quick google, and it had good reviews, so I decided to try it.

I baked some test cookies first using 1/4 c. dough like the recipe says, but they didn't turn out so well. I definitely think the smaller cookies are better. Dan and I also tasted them with and without sea salt on top, and of course we went with the sea salt. I love the sweet and salty mix! However, I think there may have been a bit too much coconut, even for me, because the almond flavor was overpowered by the coconutiness. I've been eating the cookies I didn't send to Derek, and while they are still quite tasty, I think they are best right out of the oven with a cold glass of milk!

Happy late birthday, Derek! I hope you enjoyed your cookies!

Cinnamon Roll Heaven

I went to visit Katie and Jason over the weekend. I wanted to escape Madison and I was so super excited for them (Their offer was just accepted on a house! Yay! Their first!) that I wanted to visit them and Maizy, Bella and Lola in their current abode.
After Katie's delicious Saturday morning breakfast which you should see here soon. She and I decided to embrace our mutual love of The Pioneer Woman by cooking her legendary Cinnamon Rolls.

We didn't get started until 3:30 or 4 and we finally finished around 9:30 or so. Neither of us had ever made anything with yeast before so this was a learning experience...one that we both learned from, but that turned out pretty well for a first attempt. Our other lesson was in the cinnamon realm. These were good, but Katie and I both agreed that we used too much cinnamon, so much so that we ended up with an almost spicy/salty aftertaste.


Here is Katie icing away with our maple coffee glaze. (Ours was more like icing to be perfectly honest. We used a two pound bag of powdered sugar because that is what I read in the comments section on the original website, seems that probably wasn't the orignal amount, but it worked out well for us.


The Pioneer Woman's recipe calls for a big strong man to mix the glaze. She had Marlboro Man. We had Jason. So we ended up using Katie's KA. :-) Teasing Jason. He could have stirred that stuff into oblivion if we had asked him too.



Ta Dah! Cinnamon roll heaven. In the back left you can see the remnants of our taste testing. I told Katie that I wanted to try the middle one like a brat and she quite easily popped that one out for our sampling.

Chocolate Cherry M&M

Oh. Dear. These were tasty and delicious. Robin's new favorite cookie. Has anyone else tried out the new Wild Cherry M & Ms? Yum. Robin is in love. For Valentine's Day...several bags were procured...and according to RObin, cookies just HAD to be made. The m&ms themselves were much larger than a normal m&m and therefore some crushing was involved. My thumb still hurts just thinking about it. I tried a variety of crushing methods and that thin candy coating just wasn't giving up. I eventually ended up crushing them all up by hand with a wooden spoon. Seriously. Ouch. The cookies were coated in sugar and lightly crunchy on the outside while maintaining an ooey gooey center with just a hint of cherry.



They were good warm...but the cherry flavor became more pronounced after a day or so.

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsps baking powder
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
4 squares (1 oz. each) unsweetened baking chocolate
4 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tsps vanilla
1 package M & M Wild Cherry M&Ms, crushed
Additional sugar

Combine flour and baking powder; set aside.
In saucepan over medium heat combine 2 cups sugar, butter and chocolate, stirring until butter and chocolate are melted. Remove from the heat. Gradually stir in the eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour mixture until well blended. Chill mixture. Stir in M&Ms. Chill again.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line cookie sheets with parchment/foil. Roll dough into balls and roll into additional sugar. Bake 10 to 12 minutes. The recipe yielded about 3-4 dozen cookies.

Orange Dream Cupcakes

I heart orange. This comes as a surprise to no one. Especially not Rich or Jeanna or Jill or Heather or anyone else that was around during the great orange attack at u of i. There wasn't much great about it other than the fact that I thieved a bunch of oranges from food services ate them all...then went and stole an orange from Rich...then later on harassed Jeanna for hers too. I made myself a little sick. Citrus overload. But I still love orange.

These are very orange. I came across an orange creamsicle cupake recipe at 52 Cupcakes. I went with that "recipe" for the cake. A box of Duncan Hines Orange Supreme cake mix plus a box of vanilla pudding. (Incidently I didn't know an orange supreme cake mix existed prior to this little adventure.) I didn't like the seven minute frosting idea though so I went with an extra creamy version of the magnolia buttercream. Bright blue buttercream of course, I can't leave anything alone.
The cake mix was a little bit too orangey for a creamsicle by itself, but combined with the very vanilla icing it really did taste very similar.

Splenda a.k.a. Satan Cupcakes

These cupcakes, as you can tell from their placement in my trash can, were not worthy of the cupcake name. They were dense little nuggets of pain.
The recipe came from the Splenda website directly. I thought that might mean that it had been tested. Apparently I was wrong. If for some reason you want to take a shot at these yourself: be my guest.
I really just don't know how to describe these. They were drier than anything. They didn't taste remotely like chocolate and the Splenda/sweetener taste was incredibly overpowering. Even if they had tasted like chocolate...that artificial taste would have obliterated the chocolate anyway. They weren't even worth icing. I think a half splenda/half sugar recipe would probably be the way to go. I'd recommend avoiding these little beasts unless you are retaining water, they very well might absorb all of it.

Jello Cupcakes?

Mom #2 had been talking about her love of the jello cake for a long time when I ran across this at All Things Edible. Now the whold point of my recent baking adventures is to bake things from scratch...and these cupcakes are as far from "scratch" as one can get...Virtually everything in them comes pre-packaged in some way.

My particular flavor combination ended up being a lemon cake with raspberry jello drizzled into it and topped with a raspberry white chocolate whipped topping. Also, the whole thing with using the foil cups stopping the jello from leaking out...LIES! The wrappers were covered in jello, and that was with me putting in less than the two tablespoons recommended from the recipe. People ate them. They were a funny kind of adventure and much tastier than the splenda cupcakes I made yesterday. (I may post about those little bits of Satan soon.)

If I ever make them again I would probably double up the liners and not use lemon cake, at least not from a mix. That stuff is just not for me.

Root Beer Float Cupcakes

I've done root beer float cookies...they were one of the first things I posted on here. Late last week I decided to attempt, at the prompting of Patti, root beer float cupcakes. The original recipe came from Yum SuugarFAIL! They exploded. It was hysterical. I'm not sure what was off with the recipe or me, but I thought they looked a tad runny...and 'lo and behold they were. Those tiny little freaks bubbles up all out of their mini-cupcake pans and went everywhere! Jerks! So I threw them away and moved on for a couple days. Last night I attacked them again, and added an additional cup of flour. The recipe also claimed that you should fill them almost to the top so they will puff up appropriately. Ermm...no. Round these parts, filling the liners to the top results in a mess...I put about a tablespoon and a half of batter in each cup and they came out just to the top and rounded. The finals worked out pretty well all things considered.



The batter had quite a bit of root beer in it but by the time you baked them the taste had pretty much baked right out. After baking I spooned root beer over top of the cakes and then dipped the cool cupcakes into a root beer flavored glaze. Then topped with a marshmallow vanilla frosting that I already had made up. (At 11 p.m. I was getting lazy and I needed to free up some refrigerator space for food stuffs other than extra icing.)

Overall, not bad, but next time I'll probably stick to using root beer extract instead of regular root beer.

Reddish Velvet Cupcakes

Allen and his roommates Beth and Eric enjoyed the baked goods Xian and I brought on our road trip so much that we left them begging for more! Lucky for them, I had another trip to Chicago planned to see Jens Lekman (thanks, Allen!), so of course I brought tasty treats!

Cupcakes aren't very mail friendly, so since I was driving I decided I would make some this time since I have a trusty cupcake carrier to keep them safe. I wasn't sure what kind to make, but Eric suggested red velvet, so I went with it. I have never made a red velvet cake (or cupcakes) before, but I found a recipe from Paula Deen. Oddly enough, there was no butter in this recipe! (There was in the frosting, of course!) I did double the chocolate because I like my red velvet to be more on the chocolatey side, but other than that I stuck to her recipe. I don't think I used enough food coloring because they turned out more of a reddish pink than the bold red you usually see in a red velvet, but that may have been because I was using a paste food coloring and not the liquid kind. I like them pink though, they match the sprinkles better that way!