pumpkin oreo's

Call me lazy smart, but there are times when I will skip a recipe all-together because the filling or the frosting is too hard and I don't want to fill or frost 50 cookies or cupcakes.
So any short cut I can think of to "skip" that step I'll consider do it.
And filling cookie cream sandwiches?
Oh that is time consuming.
But I have found a nice short cut.
I rolled up the cream filling into a nice long log, chilled it, then sliced it off like a cookie.
Am I brilliant or what?
I thought the cream filling would not harden and it might not take, but it sure did; firmed up just perfect for slicing.
Only thing you have to remember is to roll the cream filling a bit more narrow than the size of the cookie.
I don't think this will work for cakes or cupcakes--although I am working on it.  ;-)
But it definitely works on creme-filled sandwich cookies. And what a time saver!
When the cookies were done, I merely sliced off the filling and assembled!
I think that saved me 30 minutes of what used to be frosting labor!


So now that we only have to slice and bake and then slice and fill the cookies, I can definitely tell you
that these are very easy to make.
Which makes it perfect for the upcoming holiday baking!

BONUS: you can make your own "double stuff" Oreo's!




Slice and stuff!  Easy right?


Pumpkin oreos
From vanillasugarblog.com
print recipe

pumpkin cookie:
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 TB cornstarch
1 dash of pumpkin pie seasoning
2-3 dashes of cinnamon
¼  ts baking powder
½  ts baking soda
½  ts salt
1 cup unsalted butter, room temp
½ cup granulated sugar
3 oversized TB pumpkin butter
2 egg yolks, room temp

creme filling:
12 TB unsalted butter, room temp
1 ½ cups confectioners' sugar
giant pinch of salt
3 dashes of nutmeg
½ cup (or more) finely ground walnuts

Cook Notes:
I used a bit of nutmeg and finely chopped walnuts for the cream filling.
You don’t have to you can leave it plain or a dash or two of cinnamon.
I sliced the cookies off the dough roll about ½-inch thick.  If you slice them too thin, they aren’t that strong when baked.  This is a crispy outside cookie with a delicate, not soft, inside.  Not a wet or moist cookie at all.  Once you roll up the cookie dough in plastic wrap, roll it back and forth like a rolling pin to get it more uniform/circular; this will help you have a more “circle shaped” cookie when you slice it. There will be extra filling left over, but save it for the next batch of cookies—I think it freezes fine if you cover it well.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice, and salt; set aside.
In the bowl of your stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar together on med-high until well mixed.
Add in 2 egg yolks and pumpkin butter and mix.
Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl.
Add the flour mixture and beat on low speed until just combined.  Please do not overmix.
Scrape the cookie dough out onto a very lightly floured surface.
Form it into a two long logs. I find that once the log is wrapped its easier to form it into a more even log by rolling it back and forth as if it were a rolling pin.  Get it as uniform as you can since we will be using this to slice out round cookies.
Wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerator at least 2 hours or overnight.
Make the filling next as you need to give it time to chill.
For the filling:
Using a hand mixer or stand mixer mix all ingredients until well combined.
Do a taste test and see if it needs more salt.
Place onto plastic wrap and form into one or two logs.
Form by rolling with plastic wrap on, into a nice uniform, rounded log, so it make for slicing easier.
When ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
Remove one log of cookie dough from the fridge, and using a sharp knife slice cookies about ½-inch thick or thicker.  Place about an inch apart on baking sheet.
Bake the cookies for 10-14 minutes, or until they have puffed and the tops look set. Remove the sheets from the oven and allow the cookies to rest for about 15 minutes before transferring them to cooling rack.
Cool completely before adding the filling.
Take chilled crème filling, and slice about ¼-inch slices; place onto/into cookies.
Should make about 24-26 sandwich cookies.

friday links

Happy Friday!


There is a new, all natural cookie butter company on the scene and they are making the best
cookie butter creations ever!
GooeyOnTheInside.com

What flavors?  They have 12!!  Red Velvet and Birthday Cake are my favorites.
Hand-crafted, small batches, and no chemicals or crap in there.These flavors are dangerous!

A nice assortment of cookie butters for the foodie in your family would make an awesome gift for the holiday.


Gooey On The Inside also makes cookies!  Imagine getting this as a Christmas present?


My friend Zoe Francois of the terribly talented blog zoebakes.com has a new & improved version
of her wildly famous cookbook: Artisan Bread In 5 Minutes a Day.
Her latest creations: The New Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day
What's new inside?
Gluten Free bread recipes in 5 minutes!
"....With more than half a million copies of their books in print, Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François have proven that people want to bake their own bread, so long as they can do it easily and quickly. Based on fan feedback, Jeff and Zoë have completely revamped their first, most popular, and now-classic book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.
Responding to their thousands of ardent fans, Jeff and Zoë returned to their test kitchens to whip up more delicious recipes.  They’ve also included a gluten-free chapter, forty all-new gorgeous color photos, and one hundred informative black-and-white how-to photos. They’ve made the “Tips and Techniques” and “Ingredients” chapters bigger and better than ever before, and included readers’ Frequently Asked Questions....."

Around the web:

stunning images of nuclear ice breaker in the north pole (love this!)
does slamming the oven door cause cakes to collapse? 
a GMO wheat can silence human genes may cause early death
slow cooker hoisin chicken with bok choy & sesame brown rice
20 cookie cutters every cookie decorator should own
what's new about apples?
why you need phytonutrients & how to get them
how to make the versatile asian peanut sauce
I LOVE this video! "One Day at Fenway"
a simple dietary switch could work wonders on your mood (when I have eaten turkey for breakfast I have noticed a difference in my mood)
what is B3--niacin?
10 million steps on Rt 6 (a cape cod story)
always go to the funeral 
LuLulemon quite possibly the most arrogant company ever.
claiming woman's thigh's are to blame for company's faulty pants.
Then why can other designers like Danksin do it? Stupid owner at Lululemon--I will never buy their product again.
3 over-rated supplements
27 unearthly objects made of stars!
I was so sad to hear of Chef Charlie Trotter's passing
31 (they say weird) but I think creative recipes for canned pumpkin
laurie anderson's farewell to Lou Reed 
pumpkin Tres Les Cake!
a year recovery after hurricane sandy
health benefits of pumpkin seeds
shorter days getting you down?
DIY homemade deli meat (all natural, no chemicals)
hilarious misspelled names on Starbucks cups (Love this!)
Lay's potato chips coming out with chocolate covered chips! (oh dear)
paleo & GF snickerdoodles
sea cucumber found to kill off 95% of cancer cells?  wow
when depression & anxiety loom
strong abs without those stupid crunches! (great tips)
sweet potato cobbler
DIY freezable breakfast bowls (crazy easy)
toasted coconut & chocolate granola
a map of where Americans are moving!
The annual "I Like Big Bundts" over at food librarian has started!

Congrats to Jan #7, winner of the Simply Raw Kitchen Cookbook.
Jan please email me your shipping address.



Have a wonderful weekend!

my best "almost" paleo meatloaf

On one sunday night this conversation occurred:

:::scene is sunday night dinner eating our favorite meatloaf::::
hubby: did you blog this meatloaf?
me: no
hubby: why?
me: it's ugly
hubby: but its really good!
me: true
hubby: I'm willing to bet your fans don't really care what it looks like as long as it tastes good.

And so here I am with my meatloaf.
It's such a hit in the house, I'm certain you'll love it too even if it is ugly.  LOL
I don't have a lot of photos as I never thought I would be posting this, but then again photos of raw meatloaf aren't that great anywho.....
I served this with roasted butternut squash chunks and roasted potato & red onion chunks.

I call this paleo as we do very little carbs these days (mostly save them for the weekends).
So without the carbs added in the meatloaf the loaf itself won't "puff up" much, it will be thin/flat and yes, ugly.

The leftovers are so good with morning eggs.  So good!

my best paleo meatloaf
from vanillasugarblog.com
print recipe

loaf ingredients:
1 lb of 85% lean ground beef
2 large eggs
1/4 cup of minced small sweet onion (minced really fine--I used a grater)
salt & pepper
handful of fresh parsley, chopped

loaf topping:
3-4 TB dijon mustard
a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce
1-2 TB coarse sugar crystals
pepper

cook notes:
If you want to make a larger loaf just use 2 lbs of beef and double up all the loaf ingredients (except for the loaf toppings).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray or grease up a small loaf pan, mini's work really good too.
Mix all the loaf ingredients in a bowl using your hands.
Place into a loaf in pan.
In a small bowl, mix the dijon mustard with a couple dashes of the Worcestershire sauce.
Place this mixture on fairly thick on top of meatloaf, then sprinkle with pepper, then sprinkle with the course sugar.
Place in oven and bake about 20-35 minutes? Or until done.  Sorry can't remember how long I baked this; I just watch for doneness, which I think was at the 30-minute mark? It bakes up quick as there are no fillers.

friday links + giveaway!

Happy Friday!

I have some wonderful shots of seals.
These seals know that the fishermen clean out their boats after loading the days catch, and they wait, patiently for the chum scraps to come out the end of the boat.
If you look closely, there is a smart seal, that sits right next to the water shoot and catches all the chum.
Greedy (but smart) little guy.


The seagull sitting on the back kills me!

Looking at me for treats.

See the one right under the water shoot?  He knows what he's doing.

Photos taken in chatham, ma.


Being a huge tea lover, Harmless Harvest 100% Raw Tea recently sent me a nice care package of their new raw tea
to try. Have you tried these? Wow are they good. Just 100% raw, clean, healthy tea.
No crap, no fillers, no aftertaste--just honest to goodness tasty tea.
True all natural flavors of: raw honey-lemon, raw peppermint, and unsweetened.
What is raw tea?  Picked fresh tea leaves, never dehydrated, and then blended into chilled water.  Kept cold, kept fresh.  Where are they?  They can be found in almost all Whole Foods Markets located next to their raw coconut water.
Follow Harmless Harvest on Facebook to see where they are holding tasting samples at your local Whole Foods Markets.

Cookbook Giveaway!

The Simply Raw Kitchen by Natasha Kyssa is donating a book to giveaway!

You might remember me talking about the abundance of creativity that I found looking through this cookbook.  I was so amazed at how one can get so creative with raw foods!
From The Simply Raw Cookbook:
"....The road to good health through proper diet and nutrition can lead down many paths; you may ask yourself, should I go vegan? Follow a gluten-free regimen? Should I eat raw or cooked foods? Natasha Kyssa offers all that and more in this inspiring collection of mostly raw, whole-foods recipes that will improve your health, no matter what your age. Natasha is a former international fashion model who transformed her unhealthy lifestyle by turning to raw foods almost twenty-five years ago; she is now a raw foods consultant and restaurateur who also runs marathons in her spare time. Natasha promotes a balanced, flexible diet designed for individual constitutions and based on fresh plant foods—gluten-free, toxin-free, and simply delicious. Her regimen also takes into consideration older folks and others who cannot tolerate an all-raw diet by including cooked foods. It's a cookbook and lifestyle guide to be shared between generations, much like Natasha and her mother, who contributes vegan versions of central European classics like borscht, mushroom goulash, cabbage rolls, and lovage dumplings. Other recipes include raw soups, cakes, and puddings, as well as a raw Pad Thai and spaghetti bolognese."

To enter the giveaway:
*leave ONE comment telling us what your favorite raw food dish
*please have a valid email in your comment and/or signature line
*anonymous comments will be deleted
*drawing held 11/8/2013

Around the web:

If you have a dog I hope you've heard about the tainted jerky treats?
Does salt consumption cause high blood pressure?
On a single breath of air, Stig Severinsen sets a new official Guinness World Record by swimming 250 feet (76.2m) below the ice in a frozen lake in East Greenland
Melanin Pigmentation in salmon fillets: causes, risk factors
Hilarious! I do miss LA at times. Here is: "Shalloween"
The ultimate vegan burger
How to promote your baking business on twitter
I do love cinnamon--check out these cinnamon shortbread bars
Oh how I love this idea: finger spoons!
Some of the best international slow cooker recipes I've come across in a while
DIY pickled eggplant
12 chemicals that are screwing up your hormones
DIY homemade caramel apples (easy too!)
My favorite pudding: banana. Nick shows us how easy it is to make at home
THIS mexican caesar salad has me drooling
The incredible shrinking plane seat (unreal!)
A simple test may catch early pancreatic cancer
Are you into knitting? Here are some cute animal hat patterns
Banana cream pie rice krispie treats
Chai infused butternut squash soup
Edible chocolate shot glasses! LOVE this.
Compound in broccoli may offer protection against radiation sickness
How to remove a tree stump painlessly (let me know if this works! I have a lot of tree stumps after
hurricane sandy)
Chili-garlic tater tots
5 foods for vibrant hair
DIY kale chips...in the microwave!
Pumpkin-pecan scones with browned butter glaze
Red Sox Koji Uehara's son comments on Dad's winning
Oh the many wonders of ginger root. Love to read about this!
Salted caramel pretzels
Scentee makes your smart phone smell like cinnamon roll when you get a text (would you buy it?)
Starbucks to open first "Zen like" tea house
David Lebovitz makes mac & cheese 
All natural chocolate nut bark
Did the Earth's water come from very early asteroid strike?
Do you have kids?  Have you had one of these days? Holy Moly!
Dark & Stormy caramel corn
Little food history on the "snack cake"
Red Flannel Hash
DIY Snicker Bar! (bookmarked & printed!)
7-layer candy bar dip (LOL!)

Massachusetts Residents: 
help sign the repeal the automatic gas tax TankTheGasTax.org
Do you know that there is going to be an automatic annual increase in the gas tax? How can that be?
This summer the legislature passed into law a linking of the gas tax to the Consumer Price Index!  That means as inflation rises so does the Massachusetts gas tax.  It is the gas tax to infinity and beyond.
Worse yet, it is taxation without representation.  Legislators never have to vote again to raise our taxes, but our taxes will go up! What if the CPI goes down?  You will still be paying 24 cents per gallon! The legislature capped the minimum you will pay, but they did not cap the maximum we will all pay at the pump.
This tax increase is directly aimed at the working poor and middle class.  It will not only increase the cost of commuting to work, but it will also hike up the costs of food and clothing.
Remember, 24 cents is just the state’s gas tax.  It doesn’t include the federal gas tax.
How do we end this taxation without representation?
We pass a ballot question in November 2014.  The first step in the process is collecting 100,000 signatures.  Will you help us? We need people to collect signatures and to sign our petitions.
tankthegastax.org 

Have a wonderful weekend!

frosted pumpkin cheesecake bars with chocolate crust

With a hefty title comes a hefty dessert.
No doubt judging from the photos these bars are rich and delish.
The original bars came from the cookbook Baked Elements and they have a plain vanilla shortbread crust but I wanted to see if a chocolate crust would work and it did.
Also since I'm still on my pumpkin butter kick, I wanted to see if using pumpkin butter would work in these and yes it did. Saves a lot of time using a few tablespoons of pumpkin butter than using pumpkin.
The original recipe can be found here, and my modifications are below.


Not too many steps, the crust is fairly easy to make.
All that stuff about baking the crust with pie weights, nah, I'm not into that, I don't have any pie weights and my crust turned out fine.



This is a really good frosting base. Tasty.

See that wasn't too hard, right?

When it all comes together it's really good. Three nice layers of flavor.  Makes a lot, so you can share without feeling you will short yourself.  LOL!  I tease.



And congrats to the winners of the G.H. Cretors Popcorn Giveaway!
#33 BeeBubba and #70 Lisaiscooking.
I'll be emailing you today!

frosted pumpkin cheesecake bars with chocolate crust
adapted from Baked Elements
print recipe

chocolate crust:
2 ¼ cups flour
5 TB high quality cocoa powder (not dutch process)
½ cup sugar
¾ ts salt
16 ounces cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 large eggs

pumpkin cheesecake filling:
1 lb cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
½ cup canned pumpkin (plain, not pumpkin pie)
3 oversized TB of pumpkin butter
½  ts salt
2 large eggs

cream cheese frosting:
4 oz unsalted butter, softened
8 oz cream cheese, softened
3 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1 TB pure vanilla extract
1/2 ts salt

Grease the sides of a 9x13-inch baking pan. Line with parchment paper and then grease again.  Or do whatever greasing method works for you.

For the pastry dough, put the flour, cocoa powder, sugar and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until combined. Add the butter and pulse a few times, until it resembles coarse sand. In a separate small bowl, whisk the eggs. Add it to the food processor and pulse just until the dough starts to come together.  Pat the dough into a disk and wrap it in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least an hour or overnight.  I did all this by hand, using my hands to incorporate the butter with the flours and then the eggs; worked fine.  I also left dough in fridge for 3 days and it was fine.
When ready to use dough, roll out the dough between two pieces of parchment paper until it is a bit larger than the pan (9x13-inches). Turn the dough into the pan and lightly press it into the bottom and corners. Trim off any excess. Freeze for 30 minutes.  After I rolled out the dough, I used wet fingers to push the dough into the corners.  Then back into the freezer to set up again before baking.
Preheat the oven to 375.
Line the dough with aluminum foil and fill it with pie weights or dried beans. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove the foil and beans and bake for 10 minutes, or until lightly browned.
I don’t have pie weights and this step was NOT necessary at all, my crust came out perfectly.
Allow the crust to cool while you make the filling.
Reduce the oven to 300.
For the pumpkin cheesecake filling, in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese on medium until it is smooth. Add the sugar and beat again until combined.
Add in the pumpkin, and the pumpkin butter, and mix. Add in the salt, and then the eggs and mix again until nice and smooth.
Pour the cheesecake into the prepared crust and bake for 20-27 minutes, or until set and the middle is not runny; a little jiggle is ok.
You must let this cool for at least an hour and it needs to go in the fridge to set up for at least 2 hours.
For the cream cheese frosting, in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (I don’t have a mixer so I mixed all this by hand):  cream together the butter and cream cheese until well combined and fluffy. Add in the powdered sugar, vanilla, and salt and mix until smooth.
Using an offset spatula spread the frosting over the pumpkin cheesecake filling. Allow to set up in the fridge for 30 minutes before cutting and serving (I skipped this step).