Boston Cream Pie Cookies

I think it's time for something fun! Something totally off the wall and different. How about cookies? And make it a cake-y sugar cookie, sandwiched with rich custard infused with vanilla bean, and topped with a luxurious chocolate ganache! 

Wow, these cookies are pretty amazing. As individual parts (i.e. cookie, custard, ganache) they are delicious. Combine them all into one, however, and you have a full-on dessert. I guarantee you won't be eating more than one of these at a time! The hubby and I had to split our first taste-tester. Of course, we were taste-testing before dinner, so neither of us wanted to fill up on cookie. One cookie + a glass of milk= the perfect after dinner dessert.

I'd also like to add that these are probably a weekend cookie. They are labor-intensive, but don't let that scare you. They are worth it. These took the better part of my Saturday to make, but I'm not one to complain about fooling around in the kitchen. In fact, I think I perfectly timed making these cookies. I ended up making the custard while I set my butter and eggs out to soften for the dough. Once the custard was chilling in the fridge, I started on my dough. The dough is super-easy to make, and using my stand mixer, it only took about 15 minutes to get my dough in the fridge to chill. I showered while everything was chilling, and immediately came back to pre-heat the oven. The cookies were all baked and cooling within another 45 minutes. The custard needs a couple of hours to chill in the fridge so by the time I'd made the dough, chilled it, showered, baked and completely cooled all the cookies, it was ready to go. All that was left to do was to make the ganache.

I'd say the ganache took about 15 minutes to make, and it probably took 5 more minutes to drizzle chocolate on the cookies. So, to sum up, I started the cookies at 9 in the morning and by the time I finished cleaning up the fallout, it was 2 pm. As I said before, don't let this scare you! A lot of the time is hands-off (chilling, baking, cooling, etc.) and I was able to multi-task throughout. Indeed, I finished a book, got dinner prepped, took the dogs on a jaunt outside, and painted my toenails in that 5-hour window. A pretty successful day, if you ask me. 

I'd highly recommend trying these cookies. You won't regret it. They'd be great for a potluck or crowd. They'd be great for anyone that likes sugar cookies. Or vanilla bean custard. Or chocolate. Or cream puffs. You know, because these cookies kind of remind me of cream puffs. 

So, unbelievably, I seem to have caught another cold while on the tail-end of my first cold. I started getting a painfully sore throat yesterday, and it's even more sore today. Argh! This is incredibly frustrating. I'm not good at rest, and I've pretty much been resting non-stop for 2 weeks. Thank goodness for 2 things: bird-watching and books. I picked up 2 new suet baskets and a new feeder over the weekend, and the birds are coo-coo for cocoa puffs over the new seed dispensary. It's a tube feeder with 5 actual perches on it. I've caught up to 3 birds on it at the same time. It makes me giggle because it reminds me of people flocking to a bar. A bird bar, if you will (that could just be the cabin fever-induced insanity talking, peeps). I've also been burning through library books during this couple of weeks. I read one of my library books in 1 1/2 days. I literally couldn't put it down. Of course, the hubby did get a new video game for his birthday, so that's given me tons of reading time as well. I've surpassed my New Year's resolution of reading 1 book per month. In fact, my average is 2 books per month right now. Go Jessica!

So, will this be the week I get well? Fingers crossed!

Have a great week everyone!

Ingredients (makes 11 sandwich cookies):

Custard-

1 cup + 3 tbsp almond milk

1/2 vanilla bean

1/4 cup sugar

1/8 tsp salt

3 tbsp cornstarch

2 egg yolks

3-4 drops vanilla extract

Cookies-

1 3/4 sticks of unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 tbsp vanilla extract

2 large eggs, room temp

2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Ganache-

1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

up to 2/3 cup half-n-half

Directions:

1. Before making custard, set out butter and eggs for cookie dough.

2. Make the custard: Heat 1 cup almond milk in a medium size pot. Just when it starts to simmer, scrape seeds from vanilla bean into milk. Add vanilla bean pod to milk. Remove from heat, and allow to sit for 15 minutes. Remove vanilla bean pod from pot, and discard. Place back over medium heat, and add sugar and salt. In a small bowl, combine 3 tbsp almond milk with 3 tbsp cornstarch. Whisk to thoroughly combine. While constantly stirring the milk and sugar mixture, slowly pour the cornstarch mixture into the pot. In another small bowl, thoroughly whisk the egg yolks. Slowly stir 1/2 cup of hot milk mixture into egg yolks to temper them. Slowly add egg mixture back to hot milk mixture on the stove. Whisk constantly over medium heat until custard begins to thicken. Remove from heat, stir in vanilla. Strain mixture through a sieve. Place a piece of plastic wrap over completed custard to keep a skin from forming, and place in fridge. Chill for 2-3 hours.

3. Make the dough: In a stand-mixer bowl, combine butter and sugar. Mix until it forms a crumbly mixture. Mix in vanilla. Mix in eggs, one at a time. In a separate bowl, add flour, baking powder, and salt. Whisk to combine. Add flour mixture to butter mixture. Mix until well combined. Chill dough in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

4. Remove dough from fridge. Preheat oven to 350º. Lightly coat 2 cookie sheets with cooking spray. Using a 2-tbsp cookie scoop, roll dough into balls. Place dough 2 inches apart (about 8 cookies to a sheet). Using the bottom of a glass, slightly flatten dough balls. Bake in preheated oven for 10-12 minutes. Allow cookies to cool for 10 minutes on cookie sheet, them remove them to a cooling rack. Cool completely before moving on to the next step.

5. Place custard in a pastry bag. Pipe about 1 tbsp of custard onto the bottom of 11 of the sugar cookies. Sandwich with another sugar cookie. Place sandwiches on another cookie sheet covered with a piece of parchment paper.

6. Make the ganache: Using a double broiler, place chocolate in bowl. Add 1-2 tbsp of half-n-half and constantly stir while chocolate is melting. Add more half-n-half until chocolate is completely melted and consistency is good for drizzling chocolate onto cookies. Drizzle chocolate as desired onto cookies, allowing chocolate to drip down over cookies. Place completed cookies in fridge and allow to set for 30 minutes before serving. Store cookies in an airtight container and keep in the fridge.

Printable Recipe

Recipe adapted from Eat, Live, Run.

Looking for other cookie recipes? Try these!

Soft and Fluffy Peanut Butter Cookies

S'mores Cookie Sandwiches

Zucchini Cookies

Linked to: Treasure Box Tuesday, Weekend Potluck, Foodie Friday

Banana Split Truffles

It happened one day at the store.

I wasn't in a hurry, and that's always a bad idea for me. When you are obsessed with food, the grocery store can be a dangerous thing. All the sights and sounds make my creativity swirl, and I get too many ideas. I spend way too long perusing the fruit and veggies, occasionally putting something that looks really fresh in my cart. The baking aisle is another aisle I get into trouble in. There's always newer, cuter cupcake liners to snatch up. A great sale on sugar or flour will move me.  I've also been know to acquire cake mixes on occasion. While I bake mostly from scratch, you can really doctor cake mix into something amazing. Or donate it to charity. The cookie aisle (i.e. the Oreo aisle) is another problem area for me. My family (ok, the hubby's family) is obsessed with Oreo truffles. They love these things. I've made countless batches since I debuted this recipe in December. I'll be making some today, in fact. So when I saw a package of Banana Split Oreo's, I could not resist. I would not resist. 

And I went for it.

And wow! These taste exactly like a banana split! While I thought they would be good, and might taste something like banana, I had no idea just how good they would be. Or how much they would taste like a banana split. Have no fear, these are perfectly banana-y. If you have a banana split lover in the house, they will luuuuurve these. Luckily, I was able to take most of the batch out to my sister-in-law's for her birthday, so I was saved from what would doubtlessly have been a binge-fest on Oreo truffles. 

I've mentioned before, these are completely easy-peasy to make. There's no baking! I think that's the best part. All you need is a food processor, a microwave, and a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Actually, I used a little bit of gel food color, but that's totally optional. And technically,  technically, you could make these without the food processor. It would just take a bit longer and some elbow grease to mix them by hand. But on the bright side, hey, you could totally crush the Oreo's by putting them in a ziploc bag and beating the crap out of them. A good exercise in releasing some negative juju, if you will. 

Someday, I will have made truffles from all the Oreo flavors. Mwhahahha! I already have Pumpkin Spice Truffles on tap, followed by Berry Truffles. All in good time my friends, all in good time. 

Total change of subject time. Here in NE Kentucky, we were treated to some spectacularly bad weather yesterday. First of all, I woke up to my back porch in complete and total disarray. All of the chairs had been blown over. Gusts of wind had knocked half my plants over. Rain had gotten in the kitty box. I cleaned everything up, righted my plants, and shook out the kitty blankets. I've turned the kitty box, so I'm pretty sure rain won't be getting in there again. The hubby is also going to build an extremely small lean-to to protect Sam's food from rain. Right now, we have a tote on its side that Sam can crawl into to eat his food. Something permanent is in order, though. After cleaning everything up, wouldn't you know, more severe weather rolled in that afternoon. The news hadn't exactly prepared us for this weather pattern, we usually have several days warning. Luckily, the hubby and I were both home when the sky turned black and a tornado watch was issued. We spent a little time in the basement during one squall, but as usual, we ended up being safe. For the severity of the storms, there wasn't a lot of damage in our area. We never even lost power. It still ended up being a pretty crazy afternoon.

And now today? It's supposed to be clear and sunny. Crazy weather. Crazy good running weather :)

So, in conclusion, if you see Banana Split Oreos at the store, I highly recommend picking up a package and giving these a whirl. You will not regret it.

Have a great Hump Day friends!

Ingredients (makes ~20 truffles):

1 (18 oz) package Banana Split Oreos

4 ounces cream cheese

1 (16 oz) package of Vanilla Melting Candy

yellow gel food coloring (optional)

Directions:

1. Remove 2 cookies from package. Place in a ziploc bag and crush. Set aside.

2. Place remaining cookies in food processor. Pulse until cookies are crumbs. Add cream cheese to the food processor, and pulse until you have one solid chunk of "dough".

3. Scoop out balls of dough using a 1-tbsp cookie scoop. Place balls on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. 

4. Melt candy according to package directions. Add desired amount of food coloring, if using. Dip balls into melted candy, then place back on the cookie sheet. Dust truffles with crushed cookie crumbs before the melted candy sets. Let truffles sit for 30-60 minutes before digging in. Store in an airtight container. 

Printable Recipe

Love Oreo truffles? Try these recipes!

Oreo-Reese's Peanut Butter Truffles

Mint Chocolate Truffles

Oreo Birthday Cake Bites

Linked to: Weekend Potluck, Foodie Friday, Foodie Friend's Friday Linky Party, Treasure Box Tuesday

Classic Chocolate Cupcakes

with whip cream frosting and sprinkles

I warned you it would happen, and it did. It's September. Waaaaah! As we leave summer in the rearview mirror, what better way to distract ourselves than chocolate? I love a classic chocolate cupcake. There are a couple of things that a chocolate cupcake must be:

1. Moist- above all, a classic chocolate cupcake must be moist. I slightly changed my favorite vanilla cupcake recipe (which always turn out perfect!) by decreasing the vanilla extract and adding a bunch of cocoa. These cakes didn't fail me, turning out perfectly luscious.

2. Chocolatey- To start, I added a half cup of cocoa to the batter. One taste was enough to let me know I needed MORE chocolate. 3/4 cup cocoa was optimal.

3. Delicious Frosting- I hate frosting. I'll rephrase that- I hate most frostings. I hate how commercial frostings are overly sweet and excessively grainy. I also have great disdain for piling a pound of frosting on a cake. Yuck. I made my absolute favorite frosting to go on these cakes. Homemade and whipped into submission, this frosting tastes like whip cream, not commercial frosting.

And I won't add this as a requirement to a classic chocolate cupcake, but I love me some sprinkles! Really and truly, I sprinkled these cupcakes because I made them for the kids. I'll just keep telling myself that :)

I made these for our family Labor Day Cookout, and they were a hit. The kids were clamoring for cupcakes before dinner (as usual!) and I must admit, they got a few bites. My niece, the little resident sweet tooth, had 2 1/2 while I was there. Sweets never go untouched with our crowd.

Annnnnnnd, I think y'all really need to see how much the cupcakes were enjoyed-

My niece, hamming it up for the camera. I could barely get the boys to smile for the camera, but my niece? She loves the camera. If I want a picture of someone devouring a cupcake, my niece will be the first one to shove that confection in her face. And enjoy the heck out of it while she's doing it!

Boy were they mad when they realized I took a picture :)

The other ham in the family. Could this be where my niece gets it from? Haha.

Did everyone have a fun holiday weekend? We had our family barbecue on Saturday due to everyone's buy schedules. The hubby and I had a fantasy draft on Sunday afternoon that went semi-distastrously. Our league is scattered over the country, with half the faction living on the West Coast and the rest of us stretching from Northern Kentucky to Cincinnati. After some serious finagling with schedules, we found time to do an online draft. The only problem? Our friend's account wouldn't let her draft a single player. The option was simply greyed out. The other gigantic problem? We couldn't stop the draft once it started. We all had to go on auto-pick and wait for it to end to start over.  Talk about taking the air out of your tires. We thought we had our friend up and running, only to come up with the same problem when we re-started. We came up with a work-around (eventually) but a draft that should have taken an hour and half ended up delayed and stretched over a 7 hour period. Now that I think about, we just had our friends over for 7 hours. The draft may have wrapped around the 5 and a half hour mark :)

Regardless, we now have our fantasy teams, so bring on the season!

Have a great week everyone!

Ingredients (makes 12 cupcakes):

1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup butter

1 cup granulated sugar

2 egg whites

1/4 cup Greek yogurt, plain

1 cup almond milk

2 tsp vanilla extract

Whip Cream Frosting

sprinkles (garnish)

Directions:

1. Line a cupcake pan with liners. Preheat oven to 350º.

2. In a small mixing bowl, combine flour through baking soda. Whisk to mix. Set aside.

3. In a large microwave-safe mixing bowl, melt the butter. When melted, add sugar. Whisk until no lumps remain. Mixture will be very grainy. Mix in egg whites. Mix in yogurt, milk, and vanilla until batter is smooth. Batter will be very thick. Distribute evenly among cupcake pan. Bake in preheated oven, 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean with moist crumbs. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely before frosting.

4. Prepare frosting. Frost and sprinkle cupcakes to taste. Store in an airtight container.

Printable Recipe

Looking for other cupcake recipes? Try these!

Chocolate Malt Cupcakes with Malted Buttercream

Mixed Berry Cupcakes

Spiced Caramel Apple Cupcakes

Linked to: Treasure Box Tuesday, Weekend Potluck, Foodie Friday, Foodie Friends Friday Linky Party

Deep Dish Chocolate Chip Cookie for 1

This was supposed to be the first post brought to you by my new photography light. I know I said that awhile back, but this was really, truly supposed to be that post. I just couldn't stand the pictures. I'm still practicing. This shouldn't surprise me, considering how long it's taking me to get a hold on using my big camera. Call it my stubborn streak, I just keep plugging away until I get what I want. It's the best way I learn- taking tons and tons of ugly photos until the best way to get pretty pictures becomes apparent to me.

I'll share one picture from the experiment:

So, I think you can tell where the light is positioned in this photo. First of all, I'm pretty sure I chose the wrong white balance setting. The cookie is definitely a weird shade of yellow. Secondly, the shadows are all wrong. It's hard to see the ice cream scoop, which I don't like. Perhaps moving the food closer to the light will yield different shadows? Something to try. Thirdly, I think the photo would have benefited from more color. Maybe a different colored napkin to focus on, or even throwing in some chocolate chips to the picture to make it more interesting. As I mentioned, there is more work to be done. Practice makes perfect. And, also like I said before, lighting wasn't the only issue on this photo-shoot. 

Speaking of chugging along, that's how I stumbled onto this recipe. I first made it one lonely night many moons ago when the hubby was working a night shift, and the chocolate cravings made a late evening house call. Since then I've played with the recipe- different ratios, different kinds of chips, differed cooking times, substituting sea salt for regular salt, etc. I think I've finally narrowed down the best combination. Dark chocolate chips instead of regular, sea salt instead of plain, and the tiniest amount of vanilla bean ice cream dolloped on top. Seriously, these are perfect for a spur-of-the-moment craving. You know the one. The one that has you frantically pulling 8-year old packages of egg noodles and Chinese 5 Spice powder from the cupboard while you are desperately searching for a cookie. 

The best part? It's perfectly proportioned for one, and bakes in less than 60 seconds.

Oh yes. And, since it's a dessert for one, there won't be any leftovers lying around to tempt you. 

So, the little brother has arrived! I picked him up at the airport yesterday, looking a tad tired. He took the red-eye in, flying from Portland overnight and arriving at the local airport at 10:30 am. That's a rough travel time. Needless to say, yesterday was low-key. After getting back to the house, we pretty much lazed around the house and binge-watched "The League". It was the perfect day for adjusting to some jet lag :) Today won't be nearly as lazy, at least for me. The hubby and I have the hardest day of our training today, we are running 7 miles! My mind is spinning a bit, and I'm a bit anxious. I've never ran 7 miles. I know I'll be able to do it, but I'm definitely feeling a bit apprehensive right now. 

Now, I'm supposed to go run 7 miles after I've been staring at pictures of this cookie for the last hour, and all I wanna to do is cram it in my mouth? 

Tis' the life of a food blogger :)

Have a great weekend everyone!

Ingredients (makes 1 cookie):

1 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

1 tbsp granulated sugar

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 egg yolk

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp sea salt

1/4 cup flour

2 tbsp dark chocolate chips

vanilla bean ice cream (optional-for topping)

Directions:

1. In a small ramekin, combine butter with sugars. Stir to combine. Add egg yolk, stir to combine. Mix in vanilla and sea salt. Add flour, stir to combine. Add chocolate chips, stir to combine.

2. Cook in microwave 35-50 seconds or until cookie looks done. (I've played with all combinations of times, but I've found exactly 50 seconds is the perfect cooking length in my microwave.) Serve warm, topped with ice cream (if using). 

Printable Recipe

Recipe adapted from My Happy Place.

If you liked this recipe, you may enjoy these:

Salted Dark Chocolate Caramel Cookies

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies

Linked to: Weekend Potluck, Foodie Friday

Mini Chocolate Chip Zucchini Loaves

Happy Friday! We've almost made it to the weekend. Almost. In the meantime, wouldn't a slice of these mini cakes totally be the best way to start out your next lazy couple of days off? Methinks so :)

These are not your garden-variety zucchini cakes. You know the ones I'm talking about- dry. Crumbly. Bland. These mini loaves are none of those things. Quite the opposite, in fact. Moist? Check.   Delicious? Check. Chocolatey? Heck yeah, check! It's just in my nature to add chocolate chips to everything, however the hubby's aunt told me she'd never had zucchini bread with chocolate chips before. And she loved it. I was also told by my sister-in-law that my youngest nephew loved the bread as well, although she had to tell him it was "chocolate chip bread". 4 year olds don't want to hear their beloved baked goods contain a shocking amount of green vegetable. Go figure.

I found adorable little loaf pans on clearance a while ago, and I've been dying to test them since then. I'm glad I found an excuse to finally break them out! If you don't want to make mini loaves, the amount of batter should produce one good-size loaf of zucchini bread. The hubby's family loved receiving the little loaves, they were the perfect size to deliver to people. Enough cake to satisfy a sweet tooth, not so much cake that one would feel the need to leap on the treadmill post-consumption.

In fact, there's quite a bit of zucchini in the recipe. 2 cups! I definitely put a heaping 2 cups in my loaves. I love seeing all the green studded throughout the bread. I'm so excited to start getting zucchinis out of the garden. I have so many recipe ideas for my zucchinis- cookies, stuffed, maybe a soup... The creative juices have been flowing!

Until then, there's plenty of zucchini flooding the farmer's markets right now. It makes my heart happy.

I'm a little flabbergasted we're already back to another weekend. It was a whirlwind of a week, an absolute blur. I didn't have time to prepare any recipes for next week's posts, so you can guess what one of my activities this weekend will be. Cooking. Picture-taking. Picture-editing. Uploading. It's quite the process. The hubby and I found out last weekend that my brother is coming for another visit next month (yay!) so we've been working on some projects around the house. I'm incredibly excited to unveil our latest project, but I'm going to wait till it's finished to do a home decor post. Or at least wait until it's almost finished. Right now it's in pieces on the floor, but soon- Soon it will take life into some wonderful. Y'all will just have to keep guessing till it's time. Hehe :)

Have a great (and SAFE) weekend everyone!

Ingredients (makes 4 loaves):

3 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp baking soda

4 eggs, room temp

2 cups zucchini, shredded

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 cup canola oil (you can substitute applesauce here!)

2 tsp molasses

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350º. Lightly coat 4 mini loaf pans with cooking spray. Set aside.

2. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour through baking soda. Whisk to combine.

3. In a separate bowl, combine eggs through vanilla extract. Whisk to combine. 

4. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients. Fold in using a spatula. Mix until just moistened, do not over mix. Add chocolate chips to bowl, fold in with spatula.

5. Distribute batter among loaf pans. Bake in preheated oven 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Allow to cool in pans for 20 minutes, then turn loaves out to a cooling rack. Cool completely before storage.

Printable Recipe

Recipe adapted from Taste of Home.

If you enjoyed this recipe, you may enjoy these:

Glazed Strawberry Lemon Bread

Carrot Bran Muffins

Cinnamon Roll Bread

Linked to: Weekend Potluck, Foodie Friday, Treasure Box Tuesdays