Carrot Oatmeal Whoopie Pies with Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting

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baking, carrot, coconut, cream cheese, Easter, easy, oatmeal, recipes, soft cookies, whoopie pies

A little over a week ago, my roommates and I ate at a new restaurant not far from our East Side abode: Hillside Farmacy. As one may guess from the name, they use locally-sourced ingredients (except for, say, the oysters), which seems to be an excellent trend among Austin eateries. Oh, and speaking of trendy, so were the waitstaff along with most of the customers. I never feel cool enough in this town, especially during SXSW days.

During the brief wait for a table, we ogled what was housed in the bakery case. The presence of macarons will never not excite me, plus there were pastries, cupcakes, chocolates, mini tarts, and what looked to be carrot cake whoopie pies. These all come from local bakeries.

After our tasty sandwiches, Maddie and I decided to split a macaron (rose) because she had never had one, and one of the whoopie pies since they looked/sounded good and were recommended by the waitress. The tasty not-so-little cookie sandwich inspired me to make some myself!

Spicy Almond Fudge Babies: My caveman self would totally scavenge for these.

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almonds, chocolate, dates, dessert, easy, fruit, gluten-free, nut, paleo, quick, raw, recipes, snack, vegan

Years ago, my bro-in-law went on the Paleo diet. Years ago, a lot of people thought this sounded kooky. “Paleo, as in Paleolithic? What, do you hunt for your food and cook it over a fire?” It sounded like a good, healthy way to eat, but imagining a world without cheese or bread made me sad. And then I went the vegetarian route. Cavemen didn’t eat tofu, apparently.

Now it seems like everyone is jumping on the Paleo wagon. Rachel just threw an engagement party for her little brother and his fiancee. When I asked if there was anything I could make, she said that most of her relatives were eating like cavemen! Always up for a challenge, I said I’d make a Paleo-friendly dessert and set off googling. The first hit (maybe due to my location?) was from the Austin Post for things called Fudge Babies by Chocolate-Covered Katie. After reading a bunch (okay, that’s being generous) of other possible recipes, Fudge Babies it was.

Daring Cooks’ Challenge: Tamales!

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black beans, cheese, cooking, gluten-free, green chiles, Mexican, recipes, tamales, Tex-Mex, vegetarian

Maranda of Jolts & Jollies was our January 2012 Daring Cooks hostess with the mostess! Maranda challenged us to make traditional Mexican Tamales as our first challenge of the year!

Having been born and raised in San Antonio, I can assure you that I have eaten a fair share of tamales! Often my family has them on Christmas Eve, which is a very popular tradition down here. Every grocery store has corn husks in the produce section, and some even sell giant tamaleras for steaming huge batches of tamales. You might therefore assume that I’ve made tamales before, but nope…this is why they’re on my list!

Traditional tamales are meat-filled and usually have lard in the masa so I haven’t had so many in the past couple years due to the vegetarian kinds being less common. All the more reason to make my own! Maranda provided a vegan black bean recipe which sounded tasty, but I decided to go an easier route and fill mine with monterrey jack, hatch green chiles, and cumin.

I’ve always heard about how difficult, or maybe rather time-consuming, it is to make homemade tamales, but never really knew why. It’s a tradition for many families to get together and make large quantities for Christmas, so I guess making copious amounts of anything can become tedious. Since the husks need to be soaked a few hours, there is a little planning ahead, but after that, you make the filling, masa dough, and then assemble and steam.

Roasted Garlic Black-Eyed Pea Hummus

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appetizer, black-eyed peas, cooking, garlic, gluten-free, healthy, hummus, New Year's, party food, recipes, vegan

Do you eat anything special on New Year’s Eve/Day for good luck? My mom would always cook black-eyed peas (meh) and sauerkraut (no thanks!), which we’d have for dinner on the 31st. Come to think of it, shouldn’t it be a tradition on the 1st to start the year off with luck?

I don’t think of myself as a superstitious person, but do notice coincidences from time to time.

Two years ago I definitely didn’t have black-eyed peas for New Year’s because I had just made it to New Zealand. I’m not sure if they have them there, but am pretty sure that eating them for luck is a southern US thing. Anyway, aside from that amazing trip, the rest of the year was no good, partially because I was broke and bored: poor from the trip, and couldn’t find work (so I started a blog!). Last year I made this yummy black-eyed pea dip for a NYE party, and have to say that 2011 has been a much better year, at least in those areas. Hooray!

I just went ahead and tried an experiment with the things, and dang, what a win!

German Chocolate Brownies

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baking, brownies, coconut, fudgy, German chocolate, pecans, recipes

You guys, I’m not doing so well on my list and have less than two months to go until the 20s escape me.  I’ve also been  staying at my parents’ house in San Antonio for the past few weeks which wasn’t expected, but is just temporary for work things, so at least I’m making money.

There are two small bits of good news which to me are pretty major.

1) Thanks to a tip from Mary, I have conquered the art of cutting disgustingly perfect brownies.  The freezer is where it’s at.

And 2), thanks to #16 on the list, I have succeeded in trying coconut things 10 times this year.

Guess what?  I actually like it now.   (p.s. goat cheese is at 8 and sushi is still at 0…that shiz is expensive!)

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Mochi Cookies

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baking, chewy cookies, chocolate, easy, fall, gluten-free, mochi, mochiko, pumpkin, recipes

With mochiko being a new-found flour friend, I’ve been on the hunt for good mochi cookie recipes.  Not really seeing anything super exciting, yet while also being taunted by  Pumpkin Mochi by justJENN recipes, I came up with a theory.

Pumpkin cookies are often super cakey, and mochi is wonderfully chewy. What if you just replace the regular flour in pumpkin cookies with mochiko?  Answer: Jessica worries and spends lots of quality time with google.

The solution that I was happiest with and ended up using came from Joy of Baking, where it’s suggested to use 7/8 cup rice flour to 1 cup all-purpose flour. Mochiko is actually sweet rice flour (or glutinous rice flour), but I decided to give it a shot anyway.  To make life easier, I went with her recipe for pumpkin cookies. 2 cups all-purpose flour?  1 3/4 cups mochiko!  Maybe too easy?

My uneasiness with flour experimentation and the lack of daylight at 1 a.m. means no process photos.  You can see that they turned out looking like totally legit cookies, though!  They tasted like totally legit delicious cookies, too.

Thanksgiving Procrastinators Anonymous

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baking, cooking, idea, recipes, Thanksgiving

Maybe you figured it out this weekend.  Maybe you’ve known for months.  Maybe you spent last Black Friday brainstorming for this week you freakazoid.

Or maybe you’re just like me and have no clue.  Is it bad that I don’t even know if I’m responsible for more than desserts this year?

I guess it’s time to finally start thinking about what I’m going to make for Thanksgiving.  Hey, when you don’t have a turkey to thaw, it’s never too late, right?  …

Just in case I’ve got some fellow chronic procrastinators out there, here are some yummies made or craved by me:

Butternut Squash Barley Risotto can be a side but is hearty enough to be a main dish for the vegetarians out there.  It’s so creamy and packed with flavor!

Why have Tofurky when you can have Crustless Potpie Over Sweet Potato Biscuit from Vogue Vegetarian?  Oh.  Em.  Gee.

And yet another veggie alternative that I’ve been eyeing for over a year: Nut-Stuffed Delicata Squash from Shutterbean.  Tracy says the sage makes the filling taste sausage-y!

Duh: T-Day requires carbs.  Double Duh: Carbs are 100000x better when homemade.  No-Knead, Overnight Dinner Rolls were a delicious and simple answer to my dilemma with my family’s lunchtime Thanksgiving last year.

Pumpkin Stout Gingerbread Bundt with Brown Butter Icing

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baking, brown butter, bundt, cake, fall, gingerbread, icing, pumpkin, recipes, stout

Ahh, fall.  Your days are shorter, the air is cooler, and leaves crunch beneath our feet.

Wait…what’s that other sound?

Bundt pans trembling with fear!  Or is it with glee?

That’s right, we’re hurtling towards National Bundt Day (November 15!), made popular and most earnestly celebrated by Mary the Food Librarian.   Last year was my first time paying tribute to the curvaceous confection, and thus the Zebra Bundt Cake was born.  This year’s offering is much more visually tame, but the flavors certainly make up for that.  

Butternut Squash Barley Risotto

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arugula, barley, butternut squash, cooking, fall, parmesan, recipes, risotto, rosemary, sage, vegetarian

In grad school, my main source for recipes was AllRecipes.com.  I wouldn’t find out about food blogs until a few years later, and probably would have laughed if someone told me that years later I’d be writing for fun about baking and cooking.  (I might have stopped laughing if you then told me that I would still be freelancing at this point.)

One thing that drove me nuts about All Recipes is that so many of the comments would go something like this:

This dish sucked!  I subbed peanut butter for the broccoli, nixed the flour and doubled the tomato sauce, and it was TERRIBLE! (1 out of 5 stars)

I mean, really?  That’s totally not the recipe, so how can you rate it?

This was back when I would follow every single recipe to a T for fear of messing it up.

Now I’ve really let myself go and mess with most cooking and baking recipes, even if they’re for something I’ve never made.

Like risotto.

Martian Cookies!

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baking, butterscotch, chocolate, cookies, drop cookies, easy, oatmeal, recipes, soft cookies, walnuts, zucchini

My cat is in Austin now and I have finally baked something.  I think that means I’m moved in!  We’re going to ignore those three boxes in my room (two and a half, really), okay?  Deal.

What to bake first in the new abode?  Cookies seemed like a no-brainer.  I almost went with oatmeal chocolate chip as they are an old favorite, plus I’ve never blogged them.  But then I remembered something a bit similar that Jill had told me about a few times: Martian Cookies!

What gives them the extra-terrestrial name?  Zucchini!  (Martians are totally green, duh.)  They’re not super green, though; you just see little flecks from the skin.  If you or anyone you’d feed these to are weirded out by the presence of a veggie in your cookies, don’t be.  It’s undetectable.  If anything, you’ll be like, “Mmm, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies!  But what’s that?  Ohh, butterscotch!”  That stuff is tricksy like that.

Meanwhile, the zucchini martians are on soft cookie patrol.