Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies

One of my hobbies that I haven’t talked about too much is ballet. I discovered ballet as an adult; it was something that I always wanted to do but didn’t get my act together to take a class until adulthood. I take class twice a week plus have rehearsals another night. My husband is the most supportive guy ever, and he tags along with me when I go to dance. He has a fine selection of stores to explore while I am at dance: Home Depot, Best Buy, Starbucks, and Whole Foods. Oh, and he has his iPod to listen/watch.

Many times when I finish dance he has gone to Whole Foods and picked up a treat of some sort. One thing that he has purchased that we both liked were these mini oatmeal sandwich cookies. The first time I tried them I figured that I could make them (and for a lot less than they cost at the store). So this is my attempt to replicate them at home. I ended up using an oatmeal cookie recipe from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion. I love this cookbook for the varieties of cookies that it provides: it has recipes for chewy, crunchy, crisp and soft oatmeal cookies. (It has similar recipes for chocolate chip cookies and sugar cookies.)

I opted for the chewy variety, which are really good. (I had extra dough so I made some “regular” cookies too.) They are a flatter that some oatmeal cookies that you may be familiar with and I love the spices in these. I left out the nuts and used currents instead of raisins. I made these quite small since I was going to sandwich them together with filling. I used a standard cream cheese frosting for the filling. They aren’t quite the same as the ones we get at the store, but they are very yummy!

½ cup butter, softened

½ cup shortening

½ cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar, packed

2 teaspoons vanilla

¾ teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon cloves

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 egg

6 tablespoons light corn syrup

2 tablespoons milk

3 cups oats

1-1/2 cup flour

1 cup raisins (or currants)

Cream Cheese Filling

8 oz. cream cheese, softened

1 tablespoon milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

4 cups powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line cookie sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a large mixer bowl, combine butter, shortening, sugars, vanilla, spices, salt and baking soda. Combine on low until smooth. Stir in the egg, and then add the corn syrup and milk. Scrape the bowl and then stir in the oats, flour, and raisins.

Drop the dough by teaspoonfuls onto the baking sheets. Bake for about 9 minutes, until they are light golden brown. Allow to set on the baking sheet before removing to a wire rack.

Prepare the filling: In a large mixer bowl, combine the cream cheese, milk and vanilla until smooth. Slowly add the powdered sugar, mixing until the filling is smooth.

To assemble: Fill a decorating bag with a large star tip with the cream cheese filling. Pipe the filling on to a cookie in a circular pattern. Sandwich together with another cookie. Store cookies in the refrigerator.

Cookie recipe adapted from King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion. Cream Cheese Filling recipe from the Betty Crocker 40^th Anniversary Edition Cookbook.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread

Heather of Sherry Trifle chose Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread. Check out Heather’s blog for the complete recipe. I love ginger so I was really looking forward to this cake. The cake calls for fresh ginger, ground ginger and stem ginger preserved in syrup. This is the second recipe I have come across that calls for the preserved stem ginger, and I’ve yet been able to find it locally. I thought I would substitute ginger preserves, but in the end I just omitted this, since it was only a tablespoon.

Dorie posted on the Tuesdays with Dorie site that we should make sure that the pan we used was a true 9” square. I guess that some 9” square pans are really 9” if you measure them. I have a nice set of pans that my parents bought for me a number of years ago. I checked and my pan was exactly the right size.

I ended up grating the fresh ginger with a microplane grater, because as much as I like ginger I don’t really like biting into a big chunk of it. I think I got about 2 tablespoons, but it’s really hard to measure when it is grated. It may have been just a touch less. I also used dark chocolate rather than bittersweet chocolate as the recipe specified. I thought the dark chocolate would add a bit more sweetness, and provide a better balance with the ginger.

I baked this up and it was the most perfect looking cake ever. It was perfectly even on top, no cracks, no puffiness, just beautiful! It was a shame to add the chocolate glaze, but I wanted to anyway. (My husband tasted the crumbs left in the pan and said that it didn’t really need anything more.) My first attempt at the glaze was a bust. I’m not sure exactly went wrong, but the chocolate kind of curdled. The second try turned out just fine.

Some of the other Tuesdays with Dorie bloggers thought that this was too gingery, but I’m not really sure that this is possible. I allowed mine to sit overnight, allowing the flavors to come together. I’m glad I let it have time because I thought that the flavors were nicely balanced. You can taste the chocolate and the ginger comes as a nice subtle taste at the end. I really like this a lot. I’m curious about trying the fruitcake variation. I’ll have to remember that for next Christmas.

Recipe from Baking from My Home you Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 212

Toasted Pecan, White Chocolate and Toffee Chip Cookies

I saw this recipe and thought that it had a great combination of flavors. I used white chocolate chips instead of white chocolate, since that is what I had on hand. I could only find chocolate covered toffee pieces at the store, instead of just plain toffee pieces. However when I got home I realized that I had an opened bag of plain toffee chips in the cupboard. Reading thought the recipe I realized that I didn’t melt the butter as the recipe specified. I just softened the butter and it still worked out just fine. I also didn’t refrigerate them before baking, since I didn’t see that until I was already making the dough.

These are really good. They are quite soft in the middle, but that could be because I didn’t melt the butter as I was supposed to. The flavors come together nicely. I think the toffee chips are subtle, but coupled with the dark brown sugar, they add that great sort of caramel flavor. I like the white chocolate chips, but I do think that chopped white chocolate might taste even better (which is what the blogger I got this recipe from recommended).

I found this recipe on Baking Blonde’s Weblog. She has great things on her blog! I had made her recipe for chewy ginger cookies with cinnamon chips which were completely fabulous. Thanks again for another great recipe.

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

12 Tbsp (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted & cooled until warm

1 cup dark brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg plus 1 yolk

2 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup Heath Toffee Pieces

3/4 cup chopped pecans, toasted

1 cup white chocolate chips

Toast the pecans in a microwave or in a 350 degree oven. Allow to cool.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Whisk dry ingredients together; set aside.

With electric mixer, mix butter and sugars until thoroughly combined. Beat in egg, yolk and vanilla until combined. Add dry ingredients and beat at low speed just until combined. Gently fold in toffee pieces, pecan pieces and white chocolate chips. Refrigerate, if desired, 12 hours (or up to 72 hours).

Using a medium cookie scoop, place dough balls on prepared sheets about 2 inches apart. Bake for 9-12 minutes until cookies are light golden brown and outer edges start to harden yet centers are still soft. Do NOT overbake! Cool slightly on the cookie sheets before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Adapted from Baking Blonde’s Weblog

Tuesdays with Dorie: Berry Surprise Cake

Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen selected this week’s Tuesday with Dorie selection: Berry Surprise Cake. This is quite an interesting cake, and a challenging one on several levels. It requires that you make a genoise, which is an eggy, very delicate cake. You then slice off the top of the cake and hollow it out, so you can fill it with a cream/cream cheese mixture and fresh raspberries. You reassemble the whole thing and then top it with sweetened whipped cream. It sounds wonderful!

Well, I had my share of struggles making this, but I was in good company with many of the other Tuesdays with Dorie bloggers. The least of my problems was finding fresh raspberries at the store (at a price that I was willing to pay). I used strawberries instead of raspberries and they worked great. You were also supposed to make simple syrup flavored with liquor to brush on the inside of the cake. I skipped this step and simply brushed the cake with orange liquor.

The genoise did not cooperate all that much, but I tried my best! You heat the eggs and sugar over simmering water, then beat with a mixer until super light and fluffy, then fold in some butter and flour. I’m not so skilled in folding in items. I think I did a fairly good job getting the eggs to the right stage, although maybe I didn’t beat them enough. I thought I folded the butter and flour in successfully, and they eggs were still really fluffy! But when I poured the batter into the pan to bake I realized that I hadn’t fully incorporated some of the flour which was hiding at the bottom of the mixing bowl. Oh well.

It baked ok, although it sunk in the middle somewhat. I figured that was ok, although I figured I would just fill the cake as is rather than hollowing it out. I didn’t think that my cake was tall enough to hollow out anyway. I made the cream cheese filling and it tasted pretty good. I did add more sugar than the recipe called for, since it seemed to need some more sweetness. I had also sprinkled the strawberries with a little sweetener, so that added a bit, too. I whipped the cream for the topping and that was good, too.

I assembled the cake and it came together fairly well. I think it was a little easier to assemble since I wasn’t filling it as the recipe called for. I filled the center of the cake with the strawberries and the cream cheese mixture and then topped the entire cake with the whipped cream. It was a little strange topping what basically looked like whipped cream with more whipped cream. This wouldn’t have been a problem if I had hollowed out the cake.

When it was all said and done, the cake looked nice. I didn’t think that it had very much flavor, which was disappointing. The strawberries had a good flavor, but all the other flavors were so subtle. It did taste a little bit like strawberry shortcake, but there was too much whipped cream altogether. I think I could try this recipe again, using a different cake recipe, and it would taste a lot different. I liked the idea of hollowing out the cake and filling it, but this one just wasn’t a big success for me.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 273