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

Chocolate-Toffee Cookies with Toasted Pecans

I had bookmarked this recipe when I first came across it on the blogs that I read. They looked like a rich chocolate cookie with tasty toffee chips. They are a bit unusual in that they use very little flour and butter, but lots and lots of chocolate. And toffee chips. And nuts!

When I got the dough made and put it in the refrigerator to chill, I was quite worried as the dough (or batter really) was really fluid and I didn’t think it would form up. I chilled it for over an hour, and it did firm up some, but I was sure these were going to spread a lot when I baked them, and I was right. I think I could have made these a lot smaller (maybe using a teaspoon rather than a tablespoon) and then they may have worked. The one batch that I did made as regular cookies were really great once they cooked completely. They had sort of melded into several cookie globs, but boy were they good!

I had a lot of dough left and I thought about what to do with the rest of it. I thought I would try scooping it into mini muffin cups and that worked ok, but it was hard to get them cooked all of the way through and therefore were virtually impossible to remove them from the pan. I also made some in my pan that is sort of a square muffin pan. Those worked the best, but were still a challenge to get them out of the pan cleanly.

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 pound semisweet chocolate chips (bittersweet is ok too)

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

1 3/4 cups (packed) brown sugar

4 large eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

5 1/2-ounces milk chocolate toffee bits

1/2 cup toasted pecans, chopped

Toast the pecans in the oven or microwave. Set aside to cool. Chop the pecans when cool.

Melt the chocolate and the butter using a double boiler set over simmering, not boiling, water, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat, but keep chocolate warm over the hot water.

In a small bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt. In a large mixer bowl, beat the brown sugar and eggs in bowl until thick, about 5 minutes. Add the chocolate to the sugar mixture, then add the vanilla. Stir in flour mixture, then the toffee bits and pecans. Cover with saran wrap and chill batter in the refrigerator until firm, about 30 minutes. (My batter never got all that firm.)

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 cookie sheets with silicone baking mats. Spray a tablespoon measure with cooking spray, then drop heaping tablespoonfuls of batter onto sheets, spacing 2 1/2 inches apart. Periodically spray the tablespoon again to help the batter drop onto baking sheets easily. Alternatively, scoop the dough into miniature muffin pans.

Bake cookies at 350 degrees , until tops are dry and cracked but cookies are still soft to touch, about 15 minutes.

Adapted from Baking and Books who got the recipe from http://www.epicurious.com/

Tuesdays with Dorie: Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins

Rebecca of Ezra Pound Cake chose this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe: Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins. This is quite a change from some of the rich and sweet things that we’ve made recently. This is the first Tuesdays with Dorie recipe that tested my knife skills. That’s ok though, I have pretty good knife skills. (I worked in a deli for about a year and I had lots and lots of practice!)

These are a corn muffin with added cilantro, jalapeno and red pepper. The recipe also called for corn kernels, but I decided to leave it out since I didn’t want to buy corn just to use a couple of tablespoons. In the end I didn’t think that they were necessary. I almost omitted the jalapeno, since I didn’t want these to be too spicy, but they were ok in the end.

I like really sweet cornbread, but this isn’t very sweet. That was ok because there were all the extra flavors of the red pepper, cilantro, and jalapeno. I liked the chili powder as well. There actually would have been great for the holidays, with all the red and green bits added in. Dorie does give a variation with more sugar and all of the extra bits and seasonings left out, which I might try one of these days.

I used a fairly coarse cornmeal, which I think I would have preferred something ground a little finer. They weren’t really dry, but they were kind of crunchy from the cornmeal, which was a little strange. These paired well with chili, which seems to be the dish that many Tuesdays with Dorie bloggers decided to make to accompany these muffins.

Recipe from Baking from my Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 6

Lemon Meltaways

The best laid plans…I usually try to figure out what I am going to bake each week so I can pick up all of the ingredients at the store when I do my shopping over the weekend. Tuesdays are usually easy, since it’s whatever the Tuesdays with Dorie selection is. I have so many cookie cookbooks and I’ve usually got a couple of cookies that I want to make waiting in the queue.

What I always forget is that I’m usually tired by the time I get home on Thursday. I’m not usually home on Wednesday evenings so I make cookies Thursday night. Somehow I forget (every week) that by the time we get home from work Thursday and make and eat dinner, it’s 7 o’clock. Not so late for some folks, but we get up fairly early in the morning so we don’t really do late nights.

I was going to make these lemon cookies that I’ve been drooling over for some time now: cute little lemon cookie sandwiches. I was rereading the recipe and I realized that by the time I made the cookies, let them cool, making the filling, put the sandwiches together, and get everything photographed, it would be way too late! I still wanted to make something with lemon, so I searched through my cookbooks and found a couple of lemon alternatives.

I decided to make Lemon Meltaways, which started out as Lime Meltaways. I have made these before and they are so good, the perfect tea cookie. Their only downfall is that you will inevitably get a load of powdered sugar down the front of your shirt when you eat them. It’s a risk I’m willing to take!

¾ cup butter, softened

1 cup powdered sugar, divided

Zest of 2 lemons

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon vanilla

1-3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons flour

2 tablespoons cornstarch

¼ teaspoon salt

In the large bowl of an electric mixer, mix butter and 1/3 cup powdered sugar until light and fluffy. Add the lemon zest, lemon juice and vanilla and mix until fluffy. In a separate bowl combine the flour, cornstarch, and salt. Add the flour mixture to the mixer bowl and stir on low until combined.

Divide the dough into 2 halves and roll each half into a log, about 1-1/2 inches in diameter. Wrap in plastic wrap or parchment paper and refrigerate until firm, at least an hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Slice the logs into ¼ inch thick slices. Place the slices on a cookie sheet lined with a silicone baking mat. Bake until barely golden, about 12-13 minutes. Cool for 8-10 minutes. While still warm, toss cookies with remaining 2/3 cup powdered sugar in a large resealable plastic bag.

Adapted from Martha Stewart’s Cookies

Peanut Butter Brownie Cups

I wanted to make some cupcakes but I didn’t feel like going to the store to get any ingredients, so I started my search for something that I had all the ingredients on hand. Now that seemingly wouldn’t be too hard, as I try to keep lots of ingredients on hand. I really had a hard time finding something to make. I came across this recipe in one of my husband’s cookbooks (a cookbook he had before we were married) and they looked really good.

The recipes in this cookbook all come from food manufacturers and often use premade items, mixes and that sort of thing. I’m not against using mixes, but in this cake I didn’t have a brownie mix in the cupboard. I figured that I could just use a regular from-scratch brownie recipe instead. The only difference is that the box mix made brownies for a 9 x 13 pan and this recipe is for a 9 inch square pan. This recipe made only a dozen brownie cups versus the 24 that the original recipe made.

These were good! The peanut butter filling has the consistency of caramel (in fact, when I first looked at the picture in the cookbook I thought it was caramel). It was nice not to have to work with icing, which made these travel a whole lot easier than regular cupcakes. The brownie cup would be the perfect base for anything, so I could see myself using this as a base for other toppings.

Brownies

8 tablespoons butter, cut in 8 pieces

3 oz. unsweetened chocolate

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

2/3 cup flour

Peanut Butter Filling

1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup light corn syrup

½ cup peanut butter

Chocolate Glaze

½ cup chocolate chips

2 tablespoons butter

2 teaspoons light corn syrup

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a cupcake pan with paper or foil baking cups.

Melt the butter and chocolate together in a small bowl in the microwave, 1-3 minutes, stirring frequently. Set aside. In a large bowl whisk together the sugar, eggs, vanilla, baking powder and salt. Stir in the chocolate mixture until blended. Stir in the flour, whisking until no flour streaks remain.

Fill baking cups about ½ full and bake for about 22 minutes or until set. (The centers of the brownie cups may sink a little bit.) Cool completely.

To prepare the peanut butter filling, combine the sugar and corn syrup and heat in the microwave, boiling for one minute. Stir in the peanut butter until incorporated. Top each brownie cup with one teaspoon of peanut butter filling.

For the chocolate glaze, combine all glaze ingredients and microwave until melted (about 1 minute). Top the peanut butter filling with chocolate glaze. Allow to cool before serving.

Recipe adapted from Favorite Brand Name Bake Sale Cookbook. Brownie recipe from America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook

Tuesdays with Dorie: French Pear Tart

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie selection is the French Pear Tart. This week’s recipe was selected by Dorie herself! It’s great that Dorie would take the time to join our group this week. Take a look at Dorie’s blog for the complete recipe.

I’d made a pear tart before, but it was a bit different that this tart. I don’t recall what sort of filling the tart had. This tart has a fabulous almond pastry cream topped with sliced pears. I remember the sliced pears from the other tart, but that’s all I really recall.

I followed this recipe pretty much to the letter. I opted to use the canned pears, which was a huge time saver. There’s a fairly decent selection of pears in the store right now, but it was really simple to use the canned pears. I used ground sliced almonds for the ground almonds, and I think that maybe I didn’t get them ground finely enough. I noticed that Whole Food has ground almonds for sale in a package and theirs was more finely ground. At any rate, I think that what I used worked just fine.

This week’s recipe felt so different for me since I didn’t end up using my stand mixer at all! I used the food processor for the pastry and the pastry cream. I really like the press in the pan pastry that this recipe uses. I think I may have missed the “don’t be too heavy-handed” note, as I pressed my pastry in the pan quite firmly. It turned out great and doesn’t seem tough. In fact, the crust has a great cookie flavor and I can envision using this crust for lots of applications.

This tart baked up wonderfully and my husband and I ate it the next day. Oh my, it is so yummy! The pears are nice and soft, the crust has that wonderful cookie taste and the almond pastry cream is just divine. I’m so happy that I made this tart and I think I will make this sometime when I’m having company for dinner. It’s just the perfect dessert. Thanks Dorie, for creating such great recipes!

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 368-369

Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars

I got the cookbook Martha Stewart’s Cookies for Christmas and there are a bunch of recipes that I can’t wait to try! I’m still in my holiday mindset and not quite organized about baking in the New Year yet! I luckily had all of the ingredients to make these bars and my husband loves PB & J so I thought that these would be a good place to start. I ended up using raspberry preserves in the recipe, since I actually had enough of that.

I lined the pan with foil which is different than the recipe calls for. I figured that they would be sticky and hard to cut because of the jam. I’m really glad I did that so I could just lift the cookies out of the pan and then cut them on a cutting board. Cutting ended up being very easy. I did let them cool overnight, which also helped.

These are soft and have good flavor, but I was surprised that they didn’t have a more pronounced peanut butter flavor. You can taste it there, but I wanted it to be stronger. Still, they are very good and I’m sure my husband will like them a lot.

1 cup butter, softened

1-1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

2-1/2 cups smooth peanut butter

3 cups flour

1-1/2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla

1-1/2 cups jam, jelly or preserves

1 cup salted peanuts

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9 x 13 inch pan with aluminum foil and spray with nonstick spray.

Place the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and beat on medium for 2 minutes until light and fluffy. While the mixture is running, add the eggs and the peanut butter. Mix until thoroughly combined. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, salt, and baking powder. Add to the butter mixture and mix on low speed until combined. Add the vanilla and stir to combine.

Spread 2/3 of the dough in the bottom of the prepared pan. Pat down evenly. Spread the dough with the jam and then crumble the remaining dough on top of the jam. Sprinkle with the salted peanuts.

Bake for 45-60 minutes, until golden. Tent with foil while baking if the cookies get too dark too quickly. Cool completely before cutting into bars.

Adapted from Martha Stewart’s Cookies