Carrot Cake Whoopie Pies

Over the past few months (year), I have been up and down with my baking.  I have given up sugar for a spurt here and there.  My son has given up sugar for a month here and there, and I have noticed changes in him for the better when he does.

Well, that's part of the reason why I haven't been on here.  It is very hard to have a blog to inspire people to bake and cook from scratch when I am also trying to inspire people to eat less sugar and live a healthy lifestyle.  I'm stuck in the middle.

I'm hoping that those of you who follow me are at the same point and that I am inspiring you to stop buying processed foods and start making your own from home.  I just can't shake eating sugar and sweets and at the times when I have completely given it up, the day I'm done, I just want to eat cookies.  I find that when I bake, I am happy.  When I find a delicious recipe from scratch that I love, I want to share it.  I want to inspire you to get in the kitchen and cook- I hope that you will learn something new and bring it to the table for your family to enjoy.

I am spending more and more time in my kitchen these days, trying to use all fresh ingredients and making more and more on my own.  I seem to make a dessert on the weekends and try to make it last through the week, unless I find a rare gem, like this, which it was made on Sunday for Easter, then again on Tuesday for dessert for the rest of the week.

OK, fine, then again a few weeks later, because after all, there are carrots in them, so they are kind of healthy...  If you have a BBQ or party to go to this summer, I highly recommend bringing these.  You they will not disappoint.

Carrot Cake Whoopie Pies-
1 1/2 c all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter- room temp (important)
1 egg - room temperature (important)
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup old fashioned oats
1 cup finely shredded or grated carrots

Filling:
3 oz cream cheese, room temp
1/4 cup ( half stick) unsalted butter- room temp
1 tsp vanilla
2 cup confectioners sugar

1) Preheat oven to 350'.

2) In small bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  Set aside

3) In bowl of mixer, beat butter for 2 min until creamy- add in brown sugar and beat again on medium until fluffy.  Scrape down sides.

4) Add egg and vanilla, beat until incorporated, about 1 minute.  Scrape down sides.

5) Add in dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated, scrape down sides of bowl.  Add in oats and carrots, mix until incorporated.  Scrape bowl, then mix one final time.

6) Drop 1 TBSP sized rounds of batter onto cookie sheet.  Bake approx 11-14 minutes.  Halfway through baking, rotate cookie sheet.  Depending on your oven, the cooking time will vary.  Smaller cookies will take about 11 min, whereas larger will take up to 14.

7) Remove cookies from oven and let cool.  Set cookies onto baking rack to cool completely before filling.

8) Prepare filling:  Beat cream cheese and butter in bowl of stand mixer for 8 minutes, will be light and fluffy- I promise, mix for the whole 8  minutes on medium-high.  Add vanilla and confectioners sugar and beat again for 8 more minutes, stopping halfway through to scrape sides once.  Put filling into a bag and pipe onto a cookie, press another cookie on top to make a sandwich.

Makes approx 20 small whoopie pies.

Adapted from Annie's Eats.

Peeps s'mores pie

Are you looking for a way to get rid of your Easter candy? Well, this is fun, yummy, easy, and used up a lot of ours. I read an idea one time about a s'more made with a peeps instead of a marshmallow, so we made our own twist on it:

Crush up 1 sleeve of graham cracker crumbs and mix with 1/4 melted butter. Normally a graham cracker crust calls for sugar, we didn't add it because the peeps are coated with sugar. Press the crumb mixture into a small pan (8 x 8):



Next, we unwrapped our foil milk chocolate eggs (so gross, but they were still left over from last year- tasted fine and we didn't get sick), and opened a pack of m + m's that we had from valentine's day. We laid the chocolate down all over the top of the crumb crust:



Finally, we lay our peeps bunnies all over the top of the chocolates:



We baked it uncovered in the oven at 350' for about 20 minutes.
Aah don't cook us:



The thing that excited the kids the most was that the bunnies eyes and noses disappeared after baking!



We had leftovers the next day and they were still good.

Fabric easter eggs

I have been thinking about making these for a few years now. I finally mustered up the time to make 2 eggs for each of the kids, one plain and one secret pocket egg. I found the secret pocket pattern here at sew mama sew. For the non-pocket eggs, I just used the same pattern, but omitted the curve for the pocket. I also traced about half inch larger of a pocket size than the pattern for my eggs and it still felt too small (I could put a matchbox car in about half way sticking out, the kids were still excited about it though). Next year I'm going to make the pocket even bigger.

Here's our basket full of eggs, can you guess who each of the eggs were for?



Here's Hazel's favorite up close:



HAPPY EASTER!!!!

Plastic bag transfer t-shirt

I was looking on this blog today, filth wizardry at her superhero capes again, and I saw her latest post about using old plastic bags to make t-shirts (right up my alley because we are always printing onto iron on transfer paper to make our shirts personalized). I can't believe how awesome this idea is and how much I am going to use it!!! I couldn't stop thinking about how much I wanted to try it and tonight, while filling easter baskets, my mom pulled out these little bunny shaped plastic bags for the candy. Well, I immediately got Hazel's only plain white t-shirt and set to work. I placed the bunny bag on the t-shirt, then I cut out a piece of ziploc bag large enough to cover the bunny (for extra thickness), covered the whole thing with a piece of parchment paper and set to ironing.
Here's my setup, in this photo, the parchment paper is beside the shirt, I put it on top before ironing:



I had my iron set to cotton (HIGH) and pressed down very hard for about a minute, at first, I lifted it and it wasn't seeming to work, but more pressing and heat and voila: (you can see her holding another plastic bag in her hand to see what it originally looked like)



I can see it now, all the plastic birthday tablecloths, banners, treat bags, shopping bags from kids shops that I can cut and iron. Oh and the best part, the parchment paper was left unscathed, to be reused again and again!!!

Easter egg chalk

Today, we made Easter egg shaped chalk. I've been planning for this activity since October. Dave went on a business trip and I looked up all the crafts I might want to do with the kids in the spring and had him bring back the supplies (for this, the plaster of paris). I found the idea for the chalk at skip to my lou's blog.

To make the chalk, we used
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup plaster of paris
large squirt of tempera paint

I didn't have petroleum jelly to grease the inside of the eggs, so we used A and D, worked great and the chalk does not smell like a diaper rash! I made the mistake with the orange eggs of using some poster paints we had and it didn't give as good of a color as the tempera paints. We put the rest of the "batter" in ice cube trays so we didn't waste anything. Here they are in progress:



We only waited about 1.5 hours before taking the eggs out of the containers, which we should have waited overnight because two of the bottoms cracked off a bit because they weren't completely dried and settled. The ones I put in the ice cube tray popped right out and held their shape great (I did not grease the ice cube tray).



PS- I let the remaining "batter" sit in the cups we used for mixing for about an hour and then it flaked right out in the trash-very easy clean up!- do not rinse in the sink, the chalk will dry and settle in the bottom of your drain.