Little Debbie's Got Nuthin' on ME!

You know those Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies...the ones that you got in your lunch box when you were a kid. The ones that were all chewy and gooey and full of white, fluffy, sweet-creamy goodness.


Yeah! That's the ones.
I effin' love those things. I mean I could probably eat the whole damned box of them if I was left alone with them and a carton of milk. But the thing is, Little Debbie also makes all sorts of peanut butter yummies, which means with the Wifester's peanut/tree nut allergy it's just too dangerous to try to eat these and hope they didn't come into contact with the equipment that also processed the peanut butter bars, or fudge brownies, or any other potentially life threatening delectable.
For a couple of years I have simply reminisced about the good old days of lapping the cream from between those two soft, chewy cookies. Smushing the middle to get even distribution of the white, fluffy heaven throughout each and every last bite...

And then something amazing happened:
My sister in law gave me a Kitchen Aid mixer!
Best. Present. Ever!
Armed with that I've been experimenting with all sorts of goodies.
I have finally mastered a superb pizza dough and have vowed never again to order from any of these lame-ass "pizza" places around here. Sorry Pizza Hut, Papa John's, and Domino's, but that is NOT pizza.
I even made a few loaves of bread, and one of them actually turned out pretty darned good!
But the best, the most amazing thing... The thing that has me blogging instead of studying has been the Oatmeal Cream Pies, Little Debbie style that I whipped up the other day.
I can't keep my hands out of them!

If you have fond memories of Oatmeal Cream Pies, try this recipe, you won't be sorry! I think these are even better, and they don't have that preservative-filled, chemical taste. Oh, there's a few recipes floating around out there, but I did my usual thing and found a few that were good, combined them, tested and tried and here we go:

For the Cookies:

2 sticks butter, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar ( I used light, but I think dark would be good too)
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup molasses ( I didn't have molasses, so I used maple syrup)
1 tsp. Vanilla
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups flour (I even used whole wheat, and they were FABULOUS)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 cups quick oats

For the Cream Filling:

2 tsp. hot water
1/4 tsp. salt
7 oz. marshmallow cream
1/2 cup shortening (hey, I said they were good, not good for you)
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla


First, heat your oven to 350 degrees. Then, in a large bowl you want to cream your butter, sugars and molasses. Add the vanilla and eggs. Next, add flour, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon mixing well. Add the oats to the mixture. Now you drop the batter by tablespoon fulls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Be sure to give them each plenty of room to expand, otherwise you'll end up with misshapen cookies. They're still good, but not so pretty. Bake these puppies at 350 for about 10 -12 minutes. You want them to still look moist, and be just starting to brown around the edges. Be sure you don't over cook them, or you'll end up with little crispy wafers.
While those cook, dissolve your salt for the cream filling in a bowl with the hot water. Add the rest of the ingredients for the filling and mix until very fluffy.

When your cookies are cool enough to lift from the sheet without breaking, assemble by adding a dab of cream filling on the bottom of one cookie then placing another cookie on top.

Go ahead...go make em right now!

Did You Know I'm the Cookie Monster?

It's the truth. I big pink puffy heart cookies. Chocolate chip, oatmeal, sugar, they're all good in my book. I remember making my first batch of Toll House cookies with my mom, when I was just a young Cookie myself. They made me fall in love with the gooey, sugary, orbs of warm joy.
I was never quite the baker my mom was. She could run circles around Martha Stewart in the kitchen when it comes to baking. Somehow, I missed out on that talent. I think it comes from my inability to strictly follow the recipes, opting to use them more as a guideline, a mere suggestion, rather than the "This is the word of law" ideation that baking recipes seem to necessitate.
That, and I'm entirely too nonchalant and whimsical to accurately measure anything. Baking is more a science than cooking is. Cooking gives the artistic freedom to play with the measurements, add a bit of this and a dash of that at the cook's discretion. Not so with baking, at least not to the same degree as with cooking. So I tend to screw up many attempts at baking. Which is probably good, because If I could successfully bake, on even a sporadically regular basis, I'd be in some serious trouble. Because One thing I did inherit from my Grandma Palacios, if not her black curly hair and long thick eyelashes, I instead received her love of sugar. She liked hers in any form of chocolate, and I take my sugar mostly through cookies. Have I told you how much I love cookies? Hard, soft, round, square, doesn't matter, I love em!
You could probably bribe me out of house and home with the right batch of cookies.
I'm pretty sure that if I've lived my life right, and I've done all that I can to be of service to this world, then when I die, I'll receive a plate of freshly baked, still warm, assorted cookies.

I tell you all of this because it's really close to Christmas and you know what that means...
IT"S COOKIE BAKING TIME!!!!
Wifester and I went to Joann's Fabrics yesterday to get some crafty stuff, we've been making home made ornaments, more on that later, and while we were there, I found some cookie cutters on sale that were just begging to come home with us. And since I bought Easter cookie cutters, but never made Easter cookies, and I bought a dragonfly cookie cutter from our summer vacation, and never used it, I awoke this morning determined to make some cookies.

Now, as I said, I don't usually bake, I leave that to the Wifester. I cook, she bakes. It's a good system we have worked out here. But this was my task to do, so I hit the internet to look up a good sugar cookie recipe. I really wanted a nice sugar cookie that we could make some icing and decorate these with, and I found this recipe that said "The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies", and it said "Whenever you make these cookies for someone, be sure to bring along several copies of the recipe! You will be asked for it, I promise!!!"
I thought, hmmm that one sounds good, lets go!
So I glanced over the ingredients list, saw what I needed, and began mixing up the cookie dough. My bowl was getting fuller, and fuller, and fuller. Wifester, knowing my history in baking and lack of success, came in to check on me. "Wow, you got a lot of cookies there" she said to me as I continued to add the premeasured flour to the now almost overflowing bowl. "Yeah, looks like it! Could you get me a bigger bowl, please." I responded, a bit nervous, knowing I had followed these directions precisely. After we transfered the dough into the larger recepticle, I picked up the printout of the recipe to see where I'd gone wrong..."I've followed these directions exactly" I protested,
Wifester: "Well, how many dozen does this recipe make?"
me: "Oh, yeah, I didn't look at that."
Wifester: "Don't you think that's important to check before starting a recipe?"
me: "Shut up"
me: "Oh...it says Yeild: 5 dozen"

And the moral of the story is ...
Always read the " Yeild " line of a recipe before embarking upon that journey.

Guess the office is getting some cookies tomorrow :)

The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies

Submitted by: Jill Saunders Rated: 4 out of 5 by 2067 members

Prep Time: 20 Minutes Cook Time: 8 Minutes

Ready In: 3 Hours Yields: 60 servings

"Whenever you make these cookies for someone, be sure to bring along several copies of the recipe! You will be asked for it, I promise!!!"

INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 cups butter, softened 2 cups white sugar 4 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

5 cups all-purpose flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS:

1.	In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2.	Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3.	Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

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Printed from Allrecipes.com 12/7/2008