Cake With Raspberry Filling and Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

At first, I told my mother-in-law that I'd bring cookies for Easter dessert. I've got springtime cookie cutters and a pile of pastel-frosted flowers and bunnies and eggs would look nice and Eastery on the table. But while cookies were easy to make, cookies were not what I wanted to eat. I just couldn't shake my craving for a lemon and raspberry dessert. I went rogue.

I'm not really a food blogger, so don't critique my lousy photos.

The Cake

I made a white cake from a box to save myself a little time and trouble. I made 2 8-inch rounds so I'd get a nice 2-layer cake. I was not adventurous enough to go for 4 this time.

The Raspberry Filling

4-6oz fresh raspberries or frozen (thawed) raspberries

1/4c to 1/2c raspberry jam

Mash up the raspberries and jam until you get a nice lumpy raspberry goo. Spread it on top of one of the cake halves, leaving empty space at the edges for the inevitable oozing when you put the cakes together.

The Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting 

1  8-ounce package cream cheese
1  cup  confectioners' sugar
zest of 1 lemon, grated
Splash of lemon juice

I used this frosting recipe from Real Simple but ended up using less sugar than it calls for. I tasted it after one cup was added and decided I liked the balance of sweetness and tartness. If you like a sweeter frosting, then go ahead and add more powdered sugar. Also, be careful with the lemon juice. If you add too much, the frosting gets runny. Mine did, but it went on thick enough to coat the cake and firmed up just fine in the fridge.

The cake was a big success at Easter and it's already been decided that I have to make it again, preferably soon. I'm okay with that.

Apple Pie

I'm sure there are more complicated ways to make an apple pie. I've seen recipes involving nuts and cranberries, vanilla and allspice, and delicate lattice crusts. I'm sure those are very nice, but I like to keep it much more simple.

The apples: there have been physical altercations over the types of apples that are "supposed" to be used in an apple pie. There are very aggressive Granny Smith and Golden Delicious contingents. Northern Spy is often praised as a pie apple, but I've never seen one in the flesh, so I've never tasted one. One of these days I will have to spend a day making a dozen apple pies with different apple varieties so I can see what all the fuss is about. As for my pies, I've always used McIntosh apples when I can find them, and Spartan or Empire as a backup plan. The internet will tell you that McIntosh apples get too mushy when cooked, but it's not like you get an applesauce pie at the end. I don't like my apple pie to have a crunch - the filling should be pretty soft.

The crust: I have tried making my own pie crust, and I find that the effort put into the process isn't worth it when the quality of pre-made refrigerated crusts has gotten so much better. Homemade is better, but not better enough for my pie needs. I used the store-brand stuff, because it's really close to the right texture.

The spices: Cinnamon and sugar. The end. I use about 1/2 cup sugar and 1/4 tsp  ground cinnamon for a pie, but the measurements are flexible. I scoop out some sugar into a bowl, sprinkle cinnamon over it, and mix it up. It's ready for the pie.

The pie: I lay out my bottom crust in the pie plate, then I peel my apples and put them, whole, in a pot of water with a dash of lemon juice to keep them from browning as I go. Once they're all peeled, I dry them off one at a time and cut them into big wedges, tossing them into the waiting pie plate. Once I get a full layer, I sprinkle a mix of sugar and cinnamon over it using a big spoon. I aim for near-full coverage, and it's okay if some of the sugar falls through the gaps and gets to the bottom. I keep adding apples and sugar until I have a nice big mountain of apples.

Notice how big I keep the apple pieces? If I cut them much smaller than that, then they may get too soft once they're cooked. That is probably because I insist upon using the wrong apples for pie.

The top crust goes on to cover the apple sugar mountain, and holes are poked to let steam out. I covered the edges of the crust with foil to keep them from getting too dark, and only realized at the end that I should have tried that with the top part, too. I got a brown pie. 

I also may have left it in a tiny bit too long, so the filling got a little closer to applesauce than I like, but it was tasty anyway. 

Yes, that is a dirty plate. That's because it was my second helping and I was so eager to eat my first piece that I didn't bother finding my camera.

HOORAY FOR PIE!!

Red Blood Cell Cake

This week at work, we produced our 50th lot of antiglobulin control cells. It's a week-long process, from testing red cells to treating them, diluting them, putting them into little vials, and labeling and inspecting them before getting them ready to ship out. Everyone here has a hand in the process, and so we all feel connected to the product. I decided that 50 was a big and important number, and that it called for celebration.

I made a cake.

When in doubt as to choosing a way to celebrate, the answer is usually cake.

I took a plunge into real baking and made this cake completely from scratch. It's something I've been wanting to try for a long time, but I've been intimidated by the process. It just seems so complex and touchy, especially when compared to the three easy steps involved in a Betty Crocker cake mix. But, a cake was needed, and what better time to finally just go ahead and try something new? The year's nearly over already, and since "bake a cake from scratch" is on this year's list of goals, it had to happen sometime.

I asked my sister-in-law (link goes to her blog) for some help choosing an idiot-proof recipe for both cake and frosting. She's been making tasty from-scratch cakes forever, so I figured she had enough experience to know which recipes may be unrealistic for a beginner like me.

On her recommendation, I made Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" chocolate cake, and topped it with an "easy vanilla buttercream" icing. The cake was a matter of measuring everything into my stand mixer and then pouring it into pans, not very much different from what I would have done with a box cake, except that I had to measure more things out. The final batter was extremely thin - the website warned me about that, but as I was making the cake, I hesitated. It was already looking very runny, and then I was supposed to mix in a whole cup of boiling water. I did as instructed, but the result was the consistency of tomato soup, and I was sure I'd done something horribly wrong somewhere. Despite my misgivings and my many peeks into the oven to see if it was still goo, it baked up just fine into actual solid cake. Hooray!

Cake!

While the cakes cooled, I made the icing. I took the sticks of butter, which had been on the counter all day to soften, and dumped them into the stand mixer's bowl. When I tried to fluff the butter with the whisk attachment, the machine shuddered and wobbled, so I stopped it in a hurry. When the thing stopped, I saw my problem: a solid ball of butter lodged inside the whisk. I guess "room temperature" did not equal "soft" on this particular day. I poked the handle of a wooden spoon between the wires of the whip and dislodged the butterball one chunk at a time, scooping the chunks into a measuring cup. Once I'd gotten most of it, I microwaved the measuring cup so the butter would be of a more whiskable consistency.

The finished icing looked and tasted great, but it needed some color. I wasn't making a white blood cell! Again on my sister-in-law's advice, I'd picked up some Wilton gel food coloring for this project. Because red takes so much dye to get right, a gel works much better than the liquid color and doesn't dilute the icing. I picked "no taste red", thinking that maybe the others had a weird taste to them, but it turns out that this shade doesn't really go to true red. It was more of a pinky coral color. Still very nice, but not the bright oxygenated hemoglobin I was going for. I ended up using almost the whole jar.

I used a small paring knife to cut away an indentation on the top of the cake, because red cells are biconcave (dimpled on both sides), and I was going for realism. Or as much realism as an amateur baker and decorator could get out of buttercream and cake, anyway. This also gave me an opportunity to sample the cake before inflicting it on my coworkers. I was quite relieved to find it delicious.

Looks pretty good, even naked!

Here's the finished cake just before I covered it up to bring it to work. You can see that the red didn't really come out right, and I'm a little grumpy about that.

Finished Red Blood Cell Cake

Also, I tried and tried to make the icing smooth and flat, but all I had to work with was a small offset spatula. I think I'd need some fancy cake tools to get it right, but I'm not sure I'll do this often enough to invest in those.

If my coworkers were disappointed in the color or outer texture of the "red" blood cell, they didn't say anything. The cake disappeared in record time. Yay! Total cake success and I can cross something off this year's list of accomplishments!

Mmmm. Cake.

Cuppy Cakes a la Momo

This isn't a recipe. It's a fond memory and a sweet tribute to my grandmother, Momo, who left us this past weekend after 91 rich years in this world. I've been working on a written tribute, because I feel it's something I need to do, but this week has been very difficult. The words aren't lining up right, so I turned to food, as so many people do in painful times.

These "cuppy cakes" were Momo's specialty, as far as my siblings and I were concerned. "Cupcakes" could mean almost anything, but when someone said "Cuppy Cakes", you knew exactly what was waiting for you. They never stood a chance of surviving overnight once they were made.

They're just simple chocolate cupcakes, made from a box mix, with holes cut into the tops to make room for homemade, lightly sweetened whipped cream. They always lived on a shelf in her fridge because of the whipped cream filling, and we kids would try to be subtle about sneaking back over to open the fridge door for just one more... Sometimes the simplest things are really the best.

They just seemed like the right thing to make this week.

Dessert - Smores Bars

I was asked to bring a dessert to Thanksgiving this year, and since I was informed that there would already be two varieties of pie attending the party, I opted against adding to the pie pile. I briefly considered making the pumpkin bread pudding that I made for last year’s Thanksgiving dinner, but it’s a very long process, and one of the aforementioned pies was of the pumpkin variety, so it seemed wrong to overpumpkin everyone with a second gourd-based dessert.

My final dessert choice? Smores bars. My coworker brought these in a few months ago, and they were so good that they disappeared almost immediately. She gave me the recipe and I hadn’t had a chance to make them yet, so this was the perfect occasion.

Karen’s Smores Bars

2 packets of graham crackers*
2 sticks unsalted butter, melted
2 tbsp sugar
Pinch of salt (If you are using salted butter, skip the extra salt)
3 cups milk chocolate chips
miniature marshmallows (I used half the 10.5 oz bag)

* The graham crackers I bought were in a 14.4 oz box and inside they were split into 3 small packets, so I used 2 of those. It added up to 36 squares, but this is a flexible enough recipe that there's probably a margin of error built in. If your crust isn't holding together, add more butter, and if it's too gooey, add more crackers.

Line a 9x13 baking dish with a layer of foil. If you don’t do this, you’ll have a hell of a time trying to cut the bars later.

Melt your butter in the microwave. Crush the graham crackers in a food processor (break them up a little by hand first, or the processor might choke) with the sugar and salt, then stir them into the bowl of melted butter. Press this gently into the foil-lined pan to make an even crust. Bake it at 350F for about 10 minutes, and let it cool. Meanwhile, melt the chocolate chips in a double-boiler (or in a microwave, if you’re impatient, but be careful not to scorch the chocolate), so you can pour the chocolate over the graham crust. Sprinkle a layer of mini marshmallows over the chocolate, then put it under the broiler for a minute or two so the marshmallows start to swell up and brown just the slightest bit. Be very careful and watch the pan during this step – it’s a very fine line between golden-crusted marshmallows and charred ones.


Put the whole thing into the fridge to chill completely, then when you’re ready to cut it into bars, take it out and let it sit at room temperature for a few minutes. The colder it is, the harder it is to get through the chocolate layer. Lift the bars out, using the foil, then use a big knife to cut them into small squares – I didn’t let mine warm up for long, so it was hard to cut. If you’re cutting them cold, be careful and remember you’re working with hard chocolate: lay the knife across the top and rock it back and forth with a little pressure until you get fractures in the bars and pieces snap off, instead of really trying to “cut” them.

The graham layer is crumbly and the marshmallows are sticky and the chocolate gets all over your fingers, but damn, this stuff is good.

What's for Dessert - Apple Crisp

Full credit for this recipe goes to the Five Roses Flour cookbook, "A Guide To Good Cooking". Mom gave me this book when I moved out, and I am delighted to have it, because she used it a lot and it's familiar and comforting, down to the rusty spiral binding, the missing back cover, and the dog-eared and sauce-spattered pages. She has a newer edition for herself now, but I love this old one.

It's McIntosh season again, so for the past week I've been eating two apples a day. They are, hands-down, the best apples in the world and I challenge anyone to prove me wrong. They're tart and crunchy and juicy and perfect. They are apples. The absolute essence of apple. When you buy something apple-scented, it doesn't smell like a damn Golden Delicious or Pink Lady. It smells like McIntosh, King of Apples.

Since I haven't quite mastered pie crust yet, I threw together an apple crisp last night so I could enjoy my apples in a warm cinnamony medium.

Apple Crisp

Topping:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup flour (the book specifies Five Roses All-purpose Flour, of course)
1/4 tsp cinnamon
*The book also says to add 1/4 tsp cloves, but Mom never did and so I don't, either.

Cream butter and brown sugar, then add spices and stir in flour until you get a crumbly consistency.

This amount of topping is just enough to cover an 8x8 apple crisp.

The recipe then says to cover your casserole dish with an inch-tall layer of any fruit "prepared in the usual way", which I think is hilarious. Obviously a good homemaker knows exactly what to do with various fruit so make them crisp-ready. By this definition, I am not a good homemaker, but at least I can figure out what to do with apples. I always just peel them, cut them into large chunks, toss them in the dish with a few tbsp of sugar and a sprinkle of cinnamon, and then layer the topping over them. To simplify:

Filling (This part is NOT in the book)
5-8 apples (depending on size)
2-3 tbsp sugar
cinnamon

For an 8x8 pan, I needed 7 apples, but they were on the small side. Use your judgement. Don't fill it too full, because the apples will give off liquid while they cook, and it will start to bubble over. Give yourself some space. Also, leave your apple chunks pretty big, because they break down in the heat and if you start out with small pieces you'll be left with applesauce under that crumbly topping.

Bake at 350F for 35-40 minutes.



My picture isn't very good because the light in my kitchen is lousy for photography, but here's the finished crisp in all its yumminess. I would have taken a picture of it in a bowl, covered in ice cream that's slowly melting and dripping down, snaking between delicious golden mounds of soft apples and crunchy topping, but it seemed a little pornographic.

Delicious Smoothies

Since I don't yet have any canning skills, I need an alternative use for squishy fruit. I've started buying the big yogurt container instead of the little four-packs, because it ends up being cheaper and produces less waste. A week ago, when I was spooning out some yogurt into a little plastic container for my lunch, I spotted a smoothie recipe printed on the foil lid of the yogurt. It was pretty generic, along the lines of:

Pick a fruit juice.
Pick a fruit.

1 cup Dannon Light & Fit Vanilla Yogurt
1/2 cup whatever juice
1/2 cup whatever fruit (fresh or canned)
1/2 cup ice cubes

Pulverize it in a blender and enjoy a smoothie!



I did so for dessert later that night, using strawberries the first time because we managed to get almost all the way through the Costco package before they got squishy and unappetizing, and I really didn't want to waste them. My juice was a cranberry-raspberry blend. It turned out great!

Next time I tried blueberries and peaches, with plain yogurt instead of vanilla, and the same juice. I should have stuck to vanilla yogurt, or at least added honey, because it was too tart. Also, the blueberry skins stayed very visible and stringy, and I didn't like that. Next time I use blueberries I'll try blending them first, before adding the rest.

I've been serving up the smoothies in coffee mugs for sipping, because I don't have straws around. It would be neat and fancy if I had big milkshake glasses for these, but they taste just as delicious in a mug, trust me.


My latest concoction was banana and cherry, and at this point I'm not bothering with a recipe any more. I dumped in a few ice cubes, a banana, a dozen or so pitted cherries, a teaspoon of honey, a big dollop of plain yogurt, a drop of vanilla extract, and a splash of milk at the end to thin it out a little. Yummy.

I'm told that if you use frozen fruit, you can skip the ice cubes, so I'll be experimenting with that soon. I have a bag of blueberries in the freezer that were too soft to snack on - I was going to dump them into muffins, but I'm sure they would be happy in a smoothie too. I'll also buy some frozen orange juice so I can add it to my smoothies by the spoonful when I want a citrus kick.

I'm a smoothie addict now!

Dessert - Yogurt fruit salad

This is a simple dessert for when baking is just too much trouble and your freezer is out of ice cream sandwiches. It's not much fancier than having a fruit or yogurt cup for dessert, but this can be served in fancy little bowls to make it look a lot more impressive than it really is.

Yogurt fruit salad

1 Granny Smith apple, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 cup seedless red grapes, halved
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup low-fat yogurt (I used vanilla, but any kind will do)



Instructions:
Mix it up and eat it. Yum.
This amount will fill 4 little dessert bowls.

I don't love Granny Smiths for this because they're very hard and sour, but they're my husband's favorite apple so I used those instead of the Gala apples I prefer. Next time I'm trying a sweeter apple and maybe some blueberries! Almost any fruit will work well for this, except maybe for the citrus family, so go nuts and empty out your fruit bowl for dessert!

Mexican Wedding Cookies

My Christmas gift to both of my grandmothers this year will be tins of homemade cookies. They keep telling me they don't want or need anything, but everyone likes cookies. Mom told me that Grandmaman's favorite cookies are pecan cookies, so I did a little hunting for a good recipe online, and came up with these "wedding cookies". They're traditionally an almond-based cookie, but I substituted toasted pecans and they turned out wonderfully. I'm transcribing this recipe into my book immediately so I don't lose it!

Mexican Wedding Cookies (with Pecans)

1 cup butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp cold water
2 cups flour
1 cup crushed toasted pecans
powdered sugar for dusting

Toast the pecans by putting them in a single layer on a cookie sheet or pie pan, and baking at 350 for 8 minutes, stirring them at the halfway point. Put them in a large ziplock bag and crush them with a rolling pin, or do what I did and put them in a cup and smash them with the end of my smallest metal measuring cup. I guess you could dump them in a food processor, if you have one of those. You want them ground pretty fine but with bits big enough to give a crunch.

Cream butter and granulated sugar, add vanilla and water and mix well. Add the nuts and flour, mix until blended. Chill 30 min in the fridge.
Preheat oven to 350F.

Roll dough into balls and then squeeze into crescents (you can leave them as balls if you want) and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 15-20 minutes at 350, then move to a rack to cool. When cool, dip the tops in a bowl of powdered sugar. This makes about 4 dozen cookies.

And they're so cute!



I absolutely loved these. I want to make a second batch for myself but I'm getting tired of all the baking, and I also know I'll be eating a ton in the next week, with the special Christmas Eve dinner I'm making, Christmas dinner with the in-laws and then with my Mom... so I'll skip the cookies for now. But I'll be baking these again in the near future, I think.

Lemon Sugar Cookies

I signed on for the cookie exchange at work this year, and while I first had crazy dreams of complicated fancy cookies, I ended up being realistic about my time, energy, and skills, and went with lemon sugar cookies. I used the Food Network recipe for Lemon Volcano Cookies, but tweaked it a little by adding a half teaspoon of lemon essence to the cookies, and upping the lemon zest content by a pinch or two because a teaspoon seemed like nowhere near enough. Oops, upon reviewing that recipe it appears I also missed the vanilla completely. Well, no matter, they turned out great anyway. The only real hiccup in the process was the lemon sugar - after refrigerating the cookie dough and trying to cut it into slices, the lemon sugar was falling off, so they didn't keep that nice lemon-sugar "crust" like in the Food Network photo. I didn't pulse the zest and sugar in a food processor as instructed, I just smooshed it all together with a fork, so maybe that's my problem.


I did remember to use my KitchenAid mixer this time! Cookies are so much easier when I've got that thing doing all the hard work!

In return for giving my coworkers batches of these lemon cookies, I got snickerdoodles, flourless peanut butter cookies, cherry almond cookies, and adorable little sandwich cookies with a chocolate filling. Like tiny, tiny, Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies. Mmmm.

Christmas Cookie Extravaganza!

Today was Cookie Day 2010. An event of near-epic proportions. A day which leaves us covered in flour and buzzing from the sugar high.

We get together at my mother-in-law's place in December every year so we ladies can bake cookies while the menfolk wrestle with the assembly of the Christmas tree. This year there may have been some actual wrestling with the strings of lights, because I heard some muffled cursing and then some muffled electrical engineering brainstorming to try and get them to work. They figured it out, though, because in the end there was a fabulous decorated (and lit) tree to admire over eggnog and cookies. And we ended up with a LOT of cookies!


We started by making the oatmeal chocolate chip craisin cookies I've already talked about. There is debate among us whether they should rightfully be allowed as Christmas cookies, but since everyone loves them we definitely had to make them. After that, we got down to the difficult one - the shortbread cookies. The recipe is a very old one from a Five Roses cookbook my Mom's probably had since before I was born. We always made them for Christmas, with Mom doing the dirty work of mixing and rolling and cutting, and us kids going wild with sprinkles and colored sugar. I always end up in the "Mom" role when we make them on cookie day - they say it's because I'm better at rolling them out, but I suspect they just want to play with sprinkles. :)

The first batch, though, didn't turn out quite right. The recipe instructs the baker to knead in flour until the dough "just begins to crack". Well, I learned tonight that it is a damn fine line between "beginning to crack" and "falling apart into cookie dust". Some of the first batch was salvaged and we were able to cut out shapes with the cutters, but after one cookie sheet's worth I just rolled the remaining dough into lumps and added sprinkles and hoped they'd taste better than they looked. This was the result:


Cookie fail! They taste ok, so it's not a complete loss, but considering how pretty these cookies are when we do them right, I was frustrated with myself for misjudging the flour. I started over with a second batch and they were perfect. I think I need to make these more than once a year so I can remember what "just beginning to crack" looks like.

The third cookie of the night was the peanut blossoms. I'm not a huge peanut butter fan but everyone else loves them, and there would be a riot if we skipped these. My favorite part about these cookies is eating the Hershey's Kisses that are left over.

What's for Dessert: Pumpkin Bread Pudding (and Maple Whiskey Cream Sauce)

For Thanksgiving (American-style) this year, I was assigned the task of bringing dessert. Not yet feeling a mastery of pie crusts, I was at a loss for interesting and tasty ideas. Until the Food Network rescued me. I was watching a special Thanksgiving episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay, in which the Pioneer Woman challenges him to a five-course Thanksgiving dinner cook-off. I've been following her blog for a few months now, which is why I was interested in watching in the first place. On the show, Bobby Flay made a pumpkin bread pudding for dessert, and it looked incredible. So I thought I'd give it a shot. I put the recipe together over a couple of days to save myself some stress.

A couple of days ago, I made pumpkin bread using my friend Tasha's recipe. It really is the best pumpkin bread I've ever had, so even if you're not going to make the whole bread pudding thing, at least give this bread a try. And read her blog sometime - she's got some great recipes on there. Lucky for me this recipe makes two loaves, because we couldn't help ourselves from slicing into one of them that night when it was still warm from the oven. I think I'll be making mini-loaves to give away to co-workers for Christmas this year. Plus extra for me.


Last night, I made the Pioneer Woman's Maple Whiskey Cream Sauce. I had to ask Dave to pick up some bourbon for me, because it's not generally something I'd have in the house because we're not big drinkers (especially not bourbon or whiskey). Actually, I asked him to bring me a bottle of Colonel Kwik-e-Mart's Kentucky Bourbon, but he couldn't find it and brought me Maker's Mark instead. I considered leaving the booze out, but she raves so much about it on her blog that I decided to stick to the recipe, at least the first time. It turned out so incredibly good. It took ages to thicken up and I gave up and decided to let it cool in the fridge while it was still fairly liquid, but when I pulled it out today to use, it was exactly the right consistency. I stirred it to check, and then I used the spoon to see that it had exactly the right flavor, too. I want this sauce on everything now!

This morning I got up early and cut up the bread into little cubes and toasted them in the oven while I was watching the Macy's parade. Then I followed the directions from Bobby Flay's Food Network site, skipping the sauces and substituting my own fabulous fresh pumpkin bread. I tweaked the recipe a little, using 1.5 cups of light cream and 1.5 cups of 1% milk, instead of the 2 cups heavy cream and 1 cup whole milk he calls for. It just seemed too heavy for me. And since I don't have fancy-schmancy real vanilla beans lying around, I dumped in a tablespoon or so of vanilla extract.


I served it tonight at Thanksgiving dinner, with a drizzle of the sauce and a blob of whipped cream. Fantastic. Really. My mother-in-law has decreed that this shall be a new Thanksgiving tradition, so you know it's got to be good. We split up the remaining bread pudding (and sauce) so everyone could bring some home! I give full and grateful credit to Tasha, Bobby Flay, and The Pioneer Woman... I just assembled it all!

What's for Dessert: Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Craisin Cookies

Note: edited to correct amount of butter!

These are currently my favorite cookies. Make them. You will not be disappointed. If you are disappointed, mail them to me and I will eat them.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Craisin Cookies

1/2 cup room temp butter
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup regular sugar
1tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
1tsp baking soda
1tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups oats, either quick-cook or old-fashioned (uncooked, of course)
About a cup of chocolate chips
About a cup of Craisins (dried sweetened cranberries)
Also: A gallon of milk - because you'll want a glass with your cookies later. You shouldn't make these if you're out of milk, because you'll regret it. I speak from experience.

Crank the oven to 350F. Cream the butter and sugars, then mix in eggs and vanilla. Sift all dry ingredients together (or be lazy and stir them in a bowl with a fork, like I did) and then add them to the sugar mixture, half at a time. It will be pretty thick at this point. Add the oats and stir them in. This is the point at which I wished I'd remembered I have a KitchenAid mixer in a cupboard, because my arm was hurting. This is a very hard batter to mix well by hand! Stir in Craisins and chocolate chips. Use as many as you think you need to have a few in each cookie. I ended up using about 3/4 cup of each for this batch because it seemed like enough, but I've used the full cup in the past with no problems.

Drop the dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet in tablespoon-sized blobs. Leave a little room for them to expand, but you don't need much.

Bake them for 10-12 minutes, until golden brown. Because I'm paranoid that my oven is crazy, I started peeking at 8 minutes. 10 minutes was definitely the "done" point for my batch.


Let them sit on the cookie sheet for at least one minute before taking them off to cool or they will crumble apart. Unless you want them to crumble apart on purpose because the broken ones have no calories, in which case you should remove them immediately.

This recipe makes 4 dozen. But you should double it. Because they disappear fast.

Recipe Fail - Honey Cinnamon Muffins

I'm not going to post the recipe because I'm still not sure how I botched these, and I don't want someone out there to make bad muffins and blame me.

I've made these before and they were delicious, but this time they got crispy and burned very quickly. Did I copy down the recipe wrong, or is my oven too hot? Or is it because I used our CSA honey and it's cursed?

My husband enjoyed eating the burnt offerings for breakfast today, which is sweet of him. But I'm going to try them again next weekend and use an oven thermometer to see what's going on. The oven is a near-antique wall oven and I think its temperature sensor is broken. There's a... thing... on the inside of the oven wall, which I suspect might be a sensor of some sort. If I knock it while putting something in, it shrieks. Just before sticking my muffin pans in, this happened, so maybe I messed something up, but I've also noticed that my oven tends to cook things faster than it is supposed to, and I need to keep a closer eye on things near the end of the cooking time.

My stove has issues too - the rings stay so hot for so long that even after I've turned the heat off, water will continue to boil for several minutes. It makes me nervous to try anything fancy that would require good heat control.

One of my long-term hopes for this place is to get a new stove and oven so I have something better to work with.