Pumpkin Spice Whoopie Pies

One of my favorite fall treats is the two ingredient cake.

Have you heard about it?

It's sometimes called the "Weight Watchers Cake." You simply mix one box of cake mix with one 15oz can of pumpkin puree. That's it. No other ingredients. You'll be tempted add some liquids because the mixture is quite thick, but resist the urge. It bakes into a dense cake.

I like to bake it in muffin tins, and recently decided - since it's so thick - to see what would happen if I used my cookie scoop to portion the batter out onto a cookie sheet. It bakes up into sweet pumpkin spice cake-like cookies.

Then I had a jar of marshmallow fluff in the cupboard and somehow a knife found its way to the jar and it schmeared some marshmallow fluff onto a cookie.

Heaven.

Yes, the cookie is a bit thick to be considered a whoopie pie, but it works for me!

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Pumpkin Spice Whoopie Pies 

Cake

1 box of spice cake mix

15oz can of pumpkin puree

Filling Ingredients

1 cup shortening

1 jar (7.4 oz) marshmallow fluff

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, mix the cake mix and pumpkin until thoroughly combined. Do not add any extra ingredients - batter will be very thick.

Use a cookie scoop and drop batter onto cookie sheet.

Bake 15 minutes or until done (a toothpick inserted into the center will come out clean).

Remove and cool.

In the bowl of a mixer, combine all filling ingredients and mix until the filling is light and fluffy.

Once the cookies are cool, sandwich a heaping spoonful of filling in between two cakes.


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Makes 15 whoopie pies  |   10 Weight Watchers PointsPlus 

Cheesy Kale Chips...In My Car

You know, for a girl without central air in her house, you'd think I'd dread the hot and hazy Baltimore days. I don't enjoy sweating. I don't enjoy seeing my hair frizz. And I definitely don't enjoy the feeling of sweat beads rolling down the side of my face. EWWW.

But I love it when the temp goes above 95 degrees because it's actually hot enough to bake something in my car. If you're going to get scorched, you might as well get a tasty treat out of it, right?

I've made cookies and fruit roll ups in my car, but I decided to go the healthy route: kale chips. I know, I know. Kale is ridiculously anti-climactic compared to cookies and fruit roll ups, but trust me...these things are addicting. Jack, my co-worker, rolled his eyes, crinkled his nose, and lamented the kale and eggs his wife "makes" him eat for breakfast. He was most decidedly not excited about me making kale chips. But after he ate one, he kept reaching for more and said they taste like cheese popcorn. Everyone in the office liked them, with the exception of one party pooper. But there always has to be one party pooper, doesn't there?

Here's the thing - the ingredients to make the Cheesy Kale Chips are a bit untraditional. The really "weird" ingredient is nutritional yeast (not to be confused with Brewer's Yeast). I picked everything up at my local health food store, and if I were you, I'd walk in the door of the health food store, march myself up to a one of the clerks, show them the list of ingredients and say, "Let's go on a scavenger hunt!" Seriously, don't stress yourself out trying to find it. They'll know exactly where to look. Nutritional yeast is worth finding because it gives the kale the "cheesy" flavor. Per tablespoon, nutritional yeast has 130% of your daily vitamin B-12, 4 grams of fiber, 8 grams of protein, and 60% of your daily folic acid! All in ONE TABLESPOON! It's seriously delicious stuff that you'd never know is super healthy for you too.

If these feels too ambitious for you, DON'T give up. Take a bunch of kale, make sure to wash and dry it (must be dry or else the water will steam the kale and you don't want that), tear it up, and drizzle it with olive oil (2-3 Tbls) and sprinkle it with some salt. Massage the oil and salt into the kale pieces, lay the coated kale pieces on parchment paper lined trays, and "bake" in your car for 2-3 hours. Seriously...you will be amazed at how addicting they are.

Jack is hoarding the cheesy kale chips!

Cheesy Kale Chips
Recipe lightly adapted from Pride & Vegudice

1 bunch curly kale
1 cup cashews (raw, not roasted or salted)
1 red bell pepper, deseeded and roughly chopped
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
2 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon sea salt

Place the cashews in a medium sized bowl and cover with water. Let the cashews soak for a minimum of 3 hours. This will soften the cashews and make them easier to blend. You can even do this step the night before, if you'd like, and let the cashews soak while you sleep.

Remove the tough, woody stems from the kale leaves and tear them into bite-sized pieces. Thoroughly wash and dry the kale (a salad spinner is great for this) and drop the pieces into the biggest bowl you have. Kale seems to expand.

In a food processor, drop the garlic cloves through the shoot while the food processor is running. When the garlic is chopped, stop the food processor, add everything but the kale, and process until everything is smooth. It should look like a really thick salad dressing.

In a large bowl, toss the "cheese sauce" and kale until the kale is thoroughly coated. Try not eat it straight from the bowl like I did. Seriously...I could have eaten the whole bowl just like that.

Line two large cookie sheets with foil or parchment paper (I only brought one with me to work). Arrange the kale pieces on the cookie sheets so there's still a little space in between them. At this point, you can either pop these in an oven at 200 degrees for around 45 minutes... or you can bake them in your car.

Make sure it's 95 degrees or hotter outside and your car is parked in full sun. Drape a bath towel over the dashboard so you don't accidentally melt it. Place the cookie sheets on the dashboard, make sure you don't need anything from your car for the next few hours, shut the door, admire your kale chips, and then walk away. The heat from sun will turn your car into an oven and the kale chips will dry out. They should be completely dried in 2-3 hours. Try not to eat them all... like Jack and me.

Mint Brownie {Jar} Cookies

So I have eight wide mouth quart jars.

Eh, make that seven jars because I'm making soup tomorrow, and I'm going to store the soup in a jar.

So I have seven wide mouth quart jars left over from the case that I bought at WalMart for $11. I used four jars to make my homemade vanilla extract and vanilla sugar. Now...what to do with the rest? My mind immediately went to jar mixes. You know, the jar contains everything needed to make a special delightful treat and all the recipient has to do is butter or water or whatever.

Yesterday morning, I decided to hold an audition for the quart jar mixes because some jar mixes just aren't created equal. I just can't package a bunch of ingredients up in a jar and give it as a gift without making sure the recipe actually works. So I gathered up some recipes to test because now is the time to do it if I'm going to be giving them away at Christmas. I saw this one by Bakerella, but I messed with her recipe a little bit because 1) that's just how I do, and 2) I didn't have plain M&M's on hand.

Corn Muffins & A Hurricane

So...what exactly does one do when a hurricane is about to roll through?

Me?

Well, I was up early thanks to my stupid internal alarm clock to take some pictures...

My Secret to Amazing Chocolate Chip Cookies (SHHHHH!)

My Facebook friend, Patty, posted on my wall that she needed my best - think state fair winning - chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Naturally, I have such a thing.

Well, kind of.

It hasn't won any ribbons, but if compliments were ribbons, you'd have to find a truck large enough to haul all of them.

So, I've got a couple of secrets to my cookie making that I'd like to share with you.

These secrets, I'm only sharing with you, my closest friends, because that's what friends are for.

And I am that kind of friend.

And I'm hoping I can help Patty win a blue ribbon.

My secret to the best chocolate chip cookie are as follows...