Cake Mix Cookies

Sometimes you need something quick and easy, but don't want to a cake from a mix. Well, there are many things you can do with a cake mix besides make cake, and one of my favorites is to make cake mix cookies. You can use any flavor cake mix, and do anything you like as a mix in, or just keep them plain. Try chocolate chips, nuts, coconut, dried fruit.

Ingredients:

• 1 box cake mix (any flavor)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 c oil
• 1/4 c water
• 2 c mix ins

For my cookies, I did a yellow cake mix and mixed in chocolate chips. I also wanted to mix up the flavors a little so I put a little bit of peppermint extract in to give it just a hint of peppermint flavor.

Preheat oven to 350. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Place spoonfuls onto lightly greased cookie sheet.

Bake for 8-10 minutes until golden brown. Let cool on a cooling rack

 

These cookies are light, fluffy and soft. So, how do you keep them that way? See in them all in the green bucket? One of these is not like the other ones...Yep, there's a piece of bread packed in with the cookies. This is a great way to use the ends of the bread that no one wants to eat anyway. Anytime you make cookies, after they are cooled put them in a sealed container with a piece of bread. The bread dries out, and the cookie miraculously stay nice and soft. 

I have

I have several more things I need to share with you, but I seem to have lost the camera cord, so once that is found be ready for a funfetti bake off, assorted craft items, and the best cake ever made (sweet & salty - chocolate with salted caramel filling, and a caramel ganache - don't worry if you mouth is watering, so is mine).

Chocolate cake a la Martha

For the latest birthday I had a request for a chocolate cake. I was browsing Martha's website and found her One-bowl Chocolate Cake recipe and decided that would be the winner. The cake was SUPER easy to make, and nice only having one bowl needed, although the frosting needs two. :) I used the chocolate frosting recipe she recommended to go with the cake.

So here we go!

Ingredients
Cake:

• Unsalted butter, softened, for pans
• 3/4 cup unsweetened Dutch cocoa powder, plus more for pans
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• 3/4 cup low-fat buttermilk
• 3/4 cup warm water
• 3 tablespoons oil
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Frosting:(This made a lot of frosting, I probably used just over half of it, and that was putting it on thick. But, it is really yummy so make the full recipe and save it for later!

• 2 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• Pinch of salt
• 6 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
• 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
• 9 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled slightly
• 3/4 cup sour cream

 Directions:
Cake
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter two 8 in round pans, dust with cocoa.

Sift flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Beat on low speed until just combined. (I also decided to try out this powdered cultured buttermilk, because I never use all of the carton when I buy the buttermilk. This was a simple alternative, you just add the powder to the dry ingredients and then the water when it asks for the buttermilk in the recipe. It seemed to work just fine for me.)

Raise speed to medium, and add eggs, buttermilk, water, oil, and vanilla. Beat until smooth.

Divide batter between pans. Bake about 30 minutes, or until set.

Frosting
Sift together sugar, cocoa, and salt.

In separate bowl, beat cream cheese and butter with a mixer on medium-high speed until smooth. (I often forget to soften the cream cheese or butter until its almost too late, but not this time. And, it was so much better have it softened!) :)

Reduce speed to medium-low; gradually add sugar-cocoa mixture, and beat until combined.

Pour in chocolate in a slow, steady stream.

Add sour cream; beat until combined.

Assemble the cake
Remove first layer from pan. Spread 2 cups chocolate frosting onto top of 1 cooled layer. (Like I said before, 2 cups leaves a VERY thick filling, I used about a cup and had a good amount in the middle.)

Top with remaining layer; frost top and sides with remaining 2 cups frosting.

 Decorate as desired and call yourself Martha Jr! :)

Samoas Dream Cake

This cookie season marks the 35th birthday of the Samoas Girl Scout Cookie!

Each year, we hold an annual conference for our volunteers to kick off the Girl Scout year and get them pumped and ready to go. For this event, I was asked by the product sales team to make some cakes for their room. Once I saw the picture of the cake, I couldn't say no, I knew that I had to make it!
Here is my final version, a bit different than the recipe looked like, but more on that in a minute. :) It was quite a yummy cake!

So I glanced over the recipe, thought it was no problem and set out to shop for the goods needed to make this. Got everything home and the next day started the baking process, I read over the whole recipe and realized that there were some steps missing in the making of the cake, (mostly on the ganache) but luckily I have baked enough I was able to make it through. 

The most notable differences between my cake the one pictured on the recipe card, are that I did mine as a double layer instead of a triple (I learned with the German Chocolate Cake that triple layer yields very large pieces of cake - too much for one person, and since this was going out to the masses I thought it better to do double.) Also, the recipe said to take the cake out of the springform pan, and then put the ganache on and the chopped cookies up the sides of the cake. Well, I made 4 of these (yep that is right, 4) :) and needed to transport all of them to the event, so I just kept the cakes in the pan and put the ganache on, and let it drip down the sides some then put the cookie bits on the top of the cake. I think that it turned out well, and is probably a lot easier than trying to get the cookies evenly around the sides. So, I'd recommend doing what I did with the cookies on the top. You can make it look prettier if you do the ganache out of the pan and control where the drips down the sides are going. Also, after two cakes that the sides aren't frosted, I found I like the look of that if the cake has a pretty filling to display.

So, here we go with the how to. 

Ingredients:

For the Cake:

1 box yellow cake mix & ingredients needed to make it. 

For the Coconut Caramel Filling:

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg yolk

1 cup heavy cream

1 tsp vanilla

1 stick butter

(If you are doing a two layer cake, you can cut these portions in half)

For the crust & top:

2 box Samoas Girl Scout Cookies

2 oz chocolate chips (you can eyeball this)

For the chocolate ganache:

1 cup heavy cream

10 oz chocolate chips

(They list other ingredients for the ganache, but don't tell you what to do with them, so I just made it how I like it and I know works)

Directions:

1. Mix and bake the yellow cake according to the directions on the box using three eight inch pans. (Now, if you are doing a two layer cake you have two options. You can just bake in two pans, and have thick layers, or you can bake in three pans and still have decent sized layers with an extra yellow cake left over. This is what I opted for and let Thomas have the extra cake, with some chocolate frosting of course) Leave oven on when finished baking.

2. Prepare the coconut caramel filling by mixing brown sugar, egg yolk, cream, and vanilla.

German Chocolate Cake

I've been looking at this recipe from the Baked cookbook for awhile, and have really been wanting to try it out. Then, it was my coworkers birthday this week and she requested German Chocolate Cake, so I jumped on it and said it of course! This was quite yummy - Baked did it again!

Ingredients

German Chocolate Cake Layers:
2¼ cups cake flour
¾ cup dark, unsweetened cocoa powder
1½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
1 cup hot coffee
1 cup buttermilk
1¼ cups (2½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2¼ cups sugar
5 large eggs
1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
4 ounces dark chocolate, melted and cooled

Coconut Pecan Filling
1 1/3 cups shredded sweetened coconut
1 cup sugar
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup evaporated milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 large egg yolks
1 1/3 cup toasted pecans, chopped coarsely

Directions
MAKE THE GERMAN CHOCOLATE CAKE LAYERS
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter three 8-inch cake pans (I only had 9 inch, so that is what I used and it was fine), line the bottoms with parchment paper, and butter the parchment. Dust with flour, and knock out the excess flour.
Sift the cake flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium mixing bowl. In a small bowl, whisk together the coffee and buttermilk. (I don't drink coffee, but I found these little Nescafe one cup pouches for like $1.25)
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar until fluffy. (I just use a handheld mixer, so no paddle attachment for me. I just used the regular beaters and it came out just dandy)Scrape down the bowl and add the eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated. Add the vanilla and beat to incorporate. The mixture will look light and fluffy.

Something to Celebrate!

This week was the opening of Eclipse. Needless to say, I was quite excited for this! We have a good group that are big Twilight fans, and we got together again to go to the midnight showing. I like to be properly attired for such occasions, so it was time to make a shirt! The work wife and I made new ones for this movie, most of the other gals wore theirs from the New Moon midnight showing. (And yes, we are totally those girls) :)
These were just a simple iron in paper with some bedazzles added on. And, if you don't get my shirt read the book...its totally worth it!In order to be able to stay up for the midnight showing, there had to be a pre-party. We all made something yummy to share. I was in a time crunch, for went with simple and made puppy chow aka Chex Muddy Buddies. Now, if you have never had this you are seriously deprived in life and need to make it now! So simple and so yummy!
You can fine the recipe on any Chex box, and can use any variety of Chex in it.

9 cups Chex
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup butter or margarine1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1. In large bowl measure cereal; set aside2. In 1-quart microwaveable bowl, microwave chocolate chips, peanut butter, and butter uncovered on high 1 minute; stir. Microwave about 30 seconds longer or until mixture can be stirred smooth. Stir in vanilla. Pour mixture over cereal, stirring until evenly coated. Pour into 2-gallon resealable food storage plastic bag. (I did not have a 2 gallon sixe bag, so I did it in a 1 gallon bag twice.)3. Add Powdered sugar. Seal bag; shake until well coated. Spread on waxed paper to cool. Store in airtight container in the fridge.

Chocolate Pecan Pie

Another hit from the Baked Cookbook!
Chocolate Pecan Pie...I was short on time, but really wanted to make this, so I ended up using a premade crust for it. And of course, one pie wasn't enough so I doubled the recipe and made two! :) It was a good thing I did because they were quickly consumed at the office I didn't have any bourbon, so I opted out of using that, and it came out just fine.

Baked - Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie
1 ball of Classic Pie Dough (below), chilled (Recipe below, or just cheat like me and buy it)
2 cups pecan halves, toasted
3 large eggs
¾ cup light corn syrup
3 tbsp. sugar
4 tbsp. firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
Pinch of salt
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
3 tbsp. bourbon
1 cup (6 oz.) semisweet chocolate chips
Dust work surface with a sprinkling of flour. Unwrap the ball of chilled dough and put it directly on the work surface. Roll out into a 12-inch round. Transfer the dough to a pie dish and carefully work it into the pie dish, folding any overhang under and crimping the edge as you go. Wrap and freeze the crust until firm, about 2 hours, or up to 3 months.Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Coarsely chop ¾ cup of the pecans. Set aside.In a large bowl, whisk the eggs until combined. Add the corn syrup, sugars, butter, salt, vanilla, and bourbon. Whisk again until combined. Stir in the chopped pecans and set the filling aside.
Spread the chocolate chips evenly along the bottom of the frozen pie shell. Slowly pour the filling on top of the chocolate chips. Arrange the remaining 1 ¼ cups pecan halves on top of the filling.
Bake in the center of the oven for 30 minutes, then cover the edges of the crust loosely with the aluminum foil and bake for another 30 minutes. Test the pie by sticking a knife in the center of the filling. If the knife comes out clean, the pie is done. If the knife comes out with clumps of filing sticking to it, bake for another 5 minutes and test again.
Cool the pie on a wire rack and serve warm or at room temperature. The pie can be stored in the refrigerator, tightly covered, for up to 2 days.

Classic Pie Dough
Yield: 2 balls of dough, enough for 2 (9-inch) single-crust pies or 1 (9-inch) double-crust pie

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. fine salt
1 cup (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter
¾ cups ice cold water

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt together.

Cut the cold butter into cubes and toss the cubes in the flour mixture to coat. Put the mixture in the bowl of a food processor and pulse in short bursts until the pieces of butter are the size of hazelnuts.

While pulsing in quick, 4-second bursts, drizzle the ice water into the food processor through the feed tube.

As soon as the dough comes together in a ball, remove it from the food processor and divide it into two equal balls, Flatten to a disk and wrap each disk first in parchment paper and then in plastic wrap. Refrigerate the disks until firm, about 1 hour. (The dough can be refrigerated for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 3 months. Thaw in the refrigerator before proceeding with the recipe.)