Quickest cookies ever

OK, so a batch of chocolate chip cookies doesn’t really take a long time, but sometimes you just don’t feel like getting out all of those ingredients (or in my case, putting them all away when you’re done), or maybe you’re out of something, or maybe you have a small helper and all that measuring can make a real mess. Whatever your reason for not baking your go-to batch of cookies, here’s a recipe that is super-easy and super-delicious and super-flexible, and definitely worth trying.

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5-ingredient cake mix cookies

1 box cake mix
1 stick butter, softened
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
2 c mix-in (or combination of mix-ins)

Combine all five ingredients in a bowl until well-mixed. The batter will be very stiff. Drop by spoonful (whatever size you prefer) on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake in preheated 350° oven for 10-12 minutes. Cool on baking sheet for 2 minutes, remove to cooling rack, and continue cooling.

The number of combinations you can come up with is endless. Here are some suggestions.

cake mix flavor	+	mix-ins	=	voilá
chocolate fudge	+	Andes mint chips	=	chocolate-mint cookies
yellow or chocolate	+	butterscotch chips, Heath bits, and walnuts	=	Heath bar cookies
chocolate	+	peanut butter chips	=	chocolate-peanut butter cookies
carrot cake	+	raisins and coconut	=	carrot cake cookies
white or chocolate	+	M&Ms	=	M&M cookies
chocolate	+	chocolate chips	=	double chocolate cookies
spice	+	chopped dates and chopped walnuts	=	hermits (substitute molasses for vanilla)
butter	+	chopped pecans	=	butter pecan cookies
chocolate	+	white chocolate chips	=	reverse chocolate chip cookies
“funfetti”	+	sprinkles or mini M&Ms or both	=	Child's Delight
chocolate	+	mini-marshmallow, mini chocolate chips, and chopped nuts	=	Rocky Road cookies
chocolate	+	Raisinettes and peanuts	=	Chunky cookies
yellow or spice	+	mini-marshmallows and mini chocolate chips	=	S’more cookies

I may never make a cake with eggs and oil again.



I have been cooking all summer for a Weight Watchers client, and I have been having a blast checking out new, delicious, healthy recipes. By far, two of my favorite sources are Hungry Girl: Tips and Tricks ... for Hungry Chicks and Gina's Weight Watchers Recipes. Their recipes are lighter versions of things I want to cook anyway. They have great tips and tricks, they send email right your inbox, and their sites are easy to navigate.

Earlier this summer, I received this email tip from Hungry Girl: The Great Cake Debate (FIVE 2-Ingredient Recipes!). I love these ideas, but by far, the diet soda makes the lightest, fluffiest cakes I have ever had. I may never make a cake with eggs and oil again. Betty Crocker SuperMoist Dark Chocolate with Diet Coke, Betty Crocker Carrot cake with diet ginger ale, Betty Crocker Yellow cake with diet ginger ale ... no one can tell the difference.

Let me know which ones you try!

Countdown to Thanksgiving

Day 7: Ready, set, ... Bake! You can tell all the veteran bakers this time of year, because their grocery carts are overflowing with flour and sugar and other staples for baking. The couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, most baking goods go on sale, and the veterans stock up.

Your desserts can be started ahead of time, when you’re not doing a hundred other things, and stored in the fridge or freezer for Turkey Day.

Today is National Pumpkin Cheesecake Day. I’m so glad all the fattening desserts have national holidays. What else would I do with my time? How else would I keep my waistline growing?

Besides the flavor and the creaminess, the good news is, it’s a vegetable!

Don’t cheat like I did and eat the cake an hour or two after it comes out of the oven, it’s not worth it. Wait the full six hours, or better, overnight, you’ll be glad you did. Also, my cheesecakes almost always crack when they cool, even when I leave them to cool slowly in the oven. It’s not the end of the world, and that’s how your friends will know that it really is homemade.

Pumpkin cheesecake

1 c ginger snaps, crushed into crumbs
2 T butter, melted
2 T sugar
¼ t nutmeg, freshly grated
8 ozs cream cheese, softened
1 c light brown sugar
16 ozs ricotta cheese
1 15-oz can canned pumpkin
¼ t nutmeg, freshly grated
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 eggs

Preheat oven to 350°. In 9" round springform pan, with fork, stir ginger snap crumbs, melted butter, sugar, and nutmeg until moistened. With hand, press mixture onto bottom of pan. Tightly wrap outside of pan with heavy-duty foil to prevent leakage when baking in water bath later.

Prepare pumpkin filling: In large bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat cream cheese until smooth; slowly beat in sugar until blended, about 1 minute, scraping bowl often with rubber spatula. With mixer at low speed, beat in ricotta, pumpkin, nutmeg, and vanilla. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating just until blended after each addition. Pour pumpkin mixture into crust and place in large roasting pan. Place pan on oven rack. Carefully pour enough boiling water into pan to come 1 inch up side of springform pan. Bake cheesecake 1½ hours, or until center barely jiggles.

Remove cheesecake from water bath to wire rack; discard foil. With small knife, loosen cheesecake from side of pan to help prevent cracking during cooling. Cool cheesecake completely. Cover and refrigerate cheesecake at least 6 hours or overnight, until well chilled. Remove side of pan to serve. Garnish with crystallized ginger.

Once in a young lifetime one should be allowed to have as much sweetness as one can possibly want and hold.
— Judith Olney, author of The Joy of Chocolate

Raise your hands, who has a sugar hangover? So, now that we’ve eaten all the candy we can in the last 24 hours, what do we do with the rest? I’ve always subscribed to the “eat as much as you can the first couple of days, then get it out of site” theory. To get it out of sight, I usually put the hard candy in a baggie under the passenger seat, for something to pull out on long rides. For the chocolates, I freeze them and we pack them when we go skiing or to the beach or on hikes or picnics throughout the year.

A few years ago my friend, Jeanine, and her daughters gave me a brilliant idea! Bake with it!! Where you would ordinarily put chocolate chips or nuts or raisins, put crushed Halloween candy. The crushing is easiest if you freeze it first, then you only need a few whacks with a meat mallet or a rolling pin. You can put M&Ms or crushed Snickers in brownies or crushed Milky Way in oatmeal cookies. Or, try this version of chocolate chip cookies, just use your favorite Halloween candy in lieu of chips.

Halloween candy cookies
Makes about 3 dozen

2¼ c flour
1 t salt
1 t baking soda
¾ c sugar
¾ c brown sugar
1 c butter (2 sticks)
1 t vanilla
2 eggs
3 c crushed Halloween candy

Preheat oven to 375°. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Combine flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla in large mixer bowl. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in crushed candy. Drop by large, rounded tablespoon onto baking sheets. Bake for 13 to 15 minutes or until golden brown. Let stand for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Back by request

I made a fabulous chocolate cake for my son, Jude’s 10th birthday. One of his friends commented, “This isn’t cake, this is fudge.” It truly is dense, chocolaty, and delicious, but also truly is cake. It’s from-scratch, but truly not much more effort than a boxed cake mix. Even the non-chocolate-eaters among my friends and family are requesting this recipe (or that I make this recipe). Especially Jude’s friend, Henry, has been asking me to give the recipe to his mother, so here it is: It’s from a book called Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes. The recipes aren’t revolting, per se, but they often have revolting connotations from Roald Dahl’s books: Stink Bugs’ Eggs, Mosquitoes’ Toes and Wampfish Roes Most Delicately Fried, Crispy Wasp Stings on a Piece of Buttered Toast, and Fresh Mudburgers, for example. Bruce Bogtrotter’s Cake (from Matilda) got off easy, I think.

I added a teaspoon of vanilla to the original cake recipe, and I reduced the icing from 8 ounces of chocolate and cream to 6 ounces, I just found that the original recipe made just too much icing, and I ended up eating the last ¼ to ½ cup of icing by the spoon after I iced the cake, so if you want that little extra chocolate treat while you’re baking, by all means. I also find it’s easiest to do this in a springform pan. Enjoy!

Bruce Bogtrotter’s cake

8 oz good-quality semisweet (or bittersweet) chocolate
12 T butter, softened
1 c plus 2 T sugar
1 t vanilla
¼ c flour
6 eggs, separated, yolks lightly beaten
6 oz good-quality semisweet (or bittersweet) chocolate
6 oz heavy cream

Preheat oven to 350°. Line 8½" round springform cake pan with parchment paper, and butter the paper and the sides of the pan. Using a Pyrex bowl and a saucepan as a double-boiler so that you can be sure the water is not touching the bottom of the bowl, melt 8 oz chocolate over simmering water. When chocolate is melted, add butter, and stir until melted. Transfer chocolate to a large bowl and add sugar, flour, and lightly beaten egg yolks.

Meanwhile, whisk egg whites until stiff. Gently fold half of whites into chocolate mixture, blending thoroughly, then fold in remaining whites until completely incorporated. Pour batter into the cake pan and bake for 35 minutes. There will be a thin crust on top of the cake, and if tested with a toothpick, the inside will appear undercooked (don’t worry, the cake will firm up as it cools). Remove cake from oven, and let cool in the pan on a wire rack.

While cake is baking and cooling, make the icing. Again using the Pyrex bowl and saucepan as a double-boiler, melt 6 oz chocolate with cream, stirring occasionally until chocolate is fully melted and blended with the cream. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

When the cake is cool enough to handle, remove it carefully from the springform pan. The cake is prone to sinking slightly in the middle, so flip it upside down before icing, if necessary. Carefully spread the chocolate icing all over the cake with a spatula.

Birthday cakes galore

In our family, June, July, and August are lousy with birthdays and anniversaries. I think my sister, Bridget counted 24, but that doesn't include my husband's side of the family, and we've got 8, I think. Anyway, we make a lot of birthday cakes in the summer.

My sister, Eileen, is planning for her hubby's 40th birthday tomorrow. Brad eats the craziest, sweetest things you can imaging, and he is the thinnest man I've ever met. Mind you, he never stops moving, biking, running, hiking, boating; he coaches track and skiing at the high school where he teaches. Funny that he married the least outdoors-y sister, but I digress (and she's adapted quite nicely BTW) ...

Brad is famous for his breakfast of oatmeal with peanut butter and chocolate chips mixed right in. So, Eileen found a recipe for a peanut butter ice cream cake at http://www.recipes4cakes.com/icecream/peanut_recipe.htm, but she wanted to add chocolate to the recipe. I had just made a great, dense chocolate cake with chocolate icing for my son, Jude's 10th birthday, so I suggested adding that layer. I made the cake today (for Jude's 2nd birthday celebration, because really, you're not 10 if you don't have more than one birthday party, are you?), here's the recipe I ended up with after making some modifications from the original.

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Ice-Cream Cake

2 cellophane packages of graham crackers
3/4 c salted peanuts
1 stick butter
4 t sugar
1 qt vanilla ice cream, softened (Have you noticed that "half-gallon containers" no longer contain 2 quarts of ice cream? The Hood New England Homemade Vanilla ice cream I have contains 1.75 quarts, so you'll need a little more than a half of a "half gallon.")
1/2 c peanut butter
8 oz semi-sweet chocolate
8 oz heavy cream
1/2 c salted peanuts, chopped, for garnish

Preheat oven to 375°. Process crackers and peanuts in a food processor or blender. Melt butter in 8" x 11" baking dish. Combine cracker crumbs, nuts, sugar and butter into baking pan, mix and press down for crust. Bake for 8 minutes. Cool, place in refrigerator to chill.

Meanwhile, in a Pyrex bowl over simmering water, melt chocolate. When chocolate is melted, combine heavy cream, let sit to cool slightly. Combine softened ice cream with peanut butter until blended.

Spread ice cream over chilled crust. Top with chocolate, and sprinkle with chopped peanuts. Freeze 6 hours or until firm.

This will be delightful when we come in from a hot August day at the beach today to celebrate Jude's birthday and my in law's 44th wedding anniversary.

Happy birthday, Jude. Happy birthday, Brad. Happy anniversary, Nonni & Nanno.

Summer desserts

I was bringing a dessert to a friend's poolside gathering yesterday, and it was just too hot to cook (not to mention that there was no time between morning baseball games and afternoon party), so I made a Peach Melba in a Pail. (My husband wasn't so sure about my using the sandpail as a serving vessel, but I assured him, it had only ever been used for food, it's a great way to celebrate the season, it's fun, and it makes an impact.)

Peach melba in a pail

1 half gallon black raspberry ice cream
1 jar Trader Joe's Peach Sauce (or 3-4 sliced peaches)
1 pt of heavy cream, whipped with 1/4 c powdered sugar and 1/2 t vanilla extract (or 2 c Cool Whip)
2 c crushed Oreos
1 pt raspberries
1 clean beach sandpail

Layer ice cream, peach sauce, Oreos, raspberries, whipped cream, until you've used all ingredients. Store in freezer until ready to serve. May be made the day ahead.