Marshmallow Popcorn Treats

Marshmallow Popcorn Treats

Makes two 9x13 pans- can be halved

Pop one cup of popcorn. 

In a large pot over medium low heat, melt 3/4 cup shortening.  Add 1 large bag of mini marshmallows, about 10 cups, and melt them, stirring occasionally.  You want to keep the heat low, so the sugar doesn't cook too much and make your treats crispy!  Stir in 1/2 teaspoon vanilla.

Pour the marshmallow mixture over the popcorn, and mix quickly before it cools off too much.  I did this in another large pot, or you could do it in batches in a big bowl.  This is a LOT of popcorn!  The easiest way is to grease your hands and just dig in and mix it around- wait just a minute or two for the sugar to cool enough to handle.

Press lightly into two well-greased 9x13 pans and let cool.  Turn onto a cutting board and cut into squares.

Oreo Pops

These were so simple to make, but they turned out pretty cute!

You'll need:
Oreos (either Double Stuff or twice as many cookies as you want pops)
Lollipop sticks
Chocolate (almond bark, candy coating, or chocolate chips and shortening)
Bling (Jelly Beans, Coconut, sprinkles...whatever!)

(Lollipop sticks, Lollipop bags and candy coating can all be found in a crafts store, such as Michaels or Hobby Lobby.)

If using Double Stuff: carefully insert a lollipop stick into each cookie.

If using normal Oreos: carefully separate each cookie, making sure that all the filling is on one side of the cookie. Set aside the "naked" half to munch on while you work. Lay a lollipop stick on the "cream" half, and top with another "cream" half. Gently push the two sides together to mold the cream around the lollipop stick.

Place your "sticked" cookies on a plate and put them in the refrigerator to chill for 15-20 minutes. (I'm told this helps the chocolate stick to the cookies better. It also helps the cream set up so your sticks won't come sliding out.)

While your cookies cool, melt your chocolate in a tall, narrow mug. If using almond bark or candy coating, melt according to package directions. If, like me, you'd rather use the chocolate chips hanging out in your baking cupboard, in your mug combine:
1 cup chocolate chips
1 T. shortening

(The shortening thins the chocolate out so you don't get such a gloppy chocolate coating.)

Microwave for about 90 seconds, stirring every thirty seconds.

Carefully dunk your cookies down into the chocolate to cover, and tap the stick against the side of the cup to knock the excess chocolate back into the mug.

Lay the coated cookies on a baking sheet lined with waxed paper or a silicone baking mat. Press your desired Bling into the chocolate and leave the cookies to harden. (If using almond bark or candy coating, this will take about 10 minutes. If using chocolate chips, allow at least an hour.)

When hard, carefully remove each cookie pop from the baking sheet. I put my finished Oreo pops inside of small lollipop bags and tied them up with curling ribbon.

Enjoy!

Whippercrinkles or Really Fast Cookies

Catchy name, no? When I need treats in a hurry, I turn to this recipe. I've never met a kid who didn't adore these cookies and make their Mom ask me for the recipe. (Thankfully, all the Moms have been really nice about it when I tell them it's just a cake mix. Ha!)

If these were made from scratch, and chocolate, they'd be called Crinkles. If you use a lemon cake mix, they're called Lemon Whippersnappers.

I call 'em...

Whippercrinkles
This is adapted from Betty Crocker's Fudge Crinkles

Preheat the oven to 350 and line a large baking sheet with parchment or a silicone baking sheet.

In a bowl, combine:
1 (two layer size) cake mix (any flavor)
2 eggs
1/4 cup oil
(If this is too dry, add a bit of water)

Mix thoroughly and scoop out with a small ice cream or cookie scoop, 3" apart on the baking sheet. Bake 8 minutes, or until the edges are set.

(For a prettier cookie, these can be rolled in powdered sugar before baking, but I find that too messy for eating as a Primary treat, which is usually where these end up.)

Samoa Cookies

I came across this post last week, and mentioned it to Wonder Daddy. Unexpectedly, his eyes lit up and he squeaked "Did she have a recipe for Samoas?"

So, instead of a birthday cake this year I made him these!

In a nutshell, these are crisp buttery wafers, topped with a scoop of chewy coconut-caramel mixture, and then dunked in and drizzled with chocolate.

The recipe says to roll the dough out in a few batches, then cut with a 1.5" cookie cutter, then use a big straw to punch out the center...aw nuts. Just divide the dough in half, roll into two logs, chill, and cut into 1/4" discs. No one will miss the hole in the middle, and besides: you'll never get the coconut to go around the hole. I don't care that the author did it- she's amazing and I'm not. I'm fine with that. Really!


She recommended Werthers Chewy Caramels. I didn't know there was such a thing...but nevertheless, there was. And it was on sale, 2/$3.



So you unwrap those babies, microwave for 3 or 4 minutes with a few splashes of milk and some salt, and mix with some nicely toasted coconut (20 minutes at 300 degrees, and stir it around a few times.)

Spoon the gooey coconut and caramel onto the cookies, dredge the bottoms in chocolate (I used almond bark...it was half off after the holidays!) and use the rest of the melted almond bark to drizzle over the top. The easiest way to dunk these, I found, was melt the chocolate and pour a little at a time onto a salad plate. It was easy to swirl the cookie bottoms around without burning my fingers on a vat of molten chocolate. Although, that would be a delicious way to be burned.

You can visit her fabulously written post for a more complete recipe (I'd hate to steal her thunder) but that's it in nutshell. Yes, these take a while- it's not a "dump-mix-bake" recipe. But, they are VERY worth it. And rather economical, when you consider the girls in green vests are hawking roughly 20 cookies for $4, and this recipe makes at least 4 dozen. I made my logs small (these MUST be consumed in one bite, so small is definitely better) and I think I got about 70 cookies.

Next time, I'll make the cookie dough the night before and refrigerate. The next day, I'll just need to slice and bake, cook the coconut while they're cooling, and proceed to assemble the cookies.

Now will someone please give me a reason to make her Thin Mints? Wonder Daddy took all our cookies to the office....*sob* Something about New Year's resolutions...phooey.

Mochi

It's another Vitamix recipe! I'm in the final days of pregnancy, and craving sweets. It's fierce, I tell you! Luckily for me, we try not to keep too much prepared food around the house. It's better for us, but stinks when I go out of town and come back to...nothing, until I cook it. It's much easier to convince myself to NOT make that batch of cookies, than to tell myself to leave them in the cupboard. (Will you look at those hands? I've had the hands of an old women since I was 10. No joke. Oddly enough, they haven't GROWN since I was 12, either!)

The craving became too fierce the other day, and I wondered if it would be possible to make my own rice flour at home and create a passable mochi. For those who didn't grow up in a dense and vibrant Asian community, mochi is a rather traditional kind of Asian sweet- sweet sticky rice, mixed with a little water and sugar and pounded into a gummy dough. The dough can be rolled into balls and coated with various powders, or wrapped around fillings. My mom's favorite is mochi dough wrapped around mango ice cream. It seems that each country treats their mochi a little differently.

I started by grinding 2 cups of regular sticky rice in the Vitamix. All the recipes call for "Mochiko Sweet Rice Flour" (or glutinous rice flour.) I think Mochiko is the brand...but I was willing to give my rice flour a shot! The vitamix isn't the machine for making powder-fine flour- it left little bits and bobs behind.

The first recipe I tried is here. It was kind of a disaster- way too sticky to handle, and the larger bits of rice flour sunk to the bottom making a kind of crust. The top was yummy and smooth, though. It might have worked better with a finer flour.

My second recipe can be found here. It used about half the amount of water, so the dough was fairly pasty before being put in the microwave, rather than a liquid. I think this recipe is the keeper! I've included it below, with my changes. Basically, I've doubled the recipe, increased the sugar a tad, and changed the handling instructions slightly.

Mochi

Ingredients:
14 Tablespoons Rice Flour (1 cup less 2 Tbsp)
3 Tbsp sugar
10 Tbsp boiling water

1. In a glass dish (I used a 4 cup pyrex cup), mix rice flour and sugar.
   
2. Heat 11 Tbsp water in a pyrex cup in the microwave, and add 10 Tbsp boiling water to flour-sugar mixture. Stir two minutes.
   
3. Cover with saran wrap and microwave 2-4 minutes. I cooked mine 3.
4. Pour a small amount of oil into a large Ziploc bag, and coat inside thoroughly. Scoop hot dough into bag and start kneading. You might need to cover the bag with a towel, this is hot! Use the heel of your hand to push the dough out, then grab a bag corner and shake back into a ball. Eventually, dough will form a solid (and cool) enough lump where you can just mash it in your hands like play clay. Knead for 7-10 minutes, until kind of springy and chewy.
   
5. Grab off teaspoon-sized chunks and roll into balls. You can put filling inside (red bean paste, guava jelly, etc. were all suggested), and you can roll these in powdered peanutes, more rice flour, toasted sesame flour, etc. I left mine plain.

Here is my dough ball. It's only out of respect for YOU that this wasn't consumed as-is! It's much prettier rolled into balls, don't you think?

The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

I know that's an awful big title to give to a humble little cookie, but I believe I have found a cookie that is neither little, nor humble!

Therefore, the title fits.

The recipe was presented to me as one that would make a chewy cookie, with not too much chocolate, but just enough, with just a hint of crispy around the edges. I waited for months for an opportunity to make these cookies. When a girl in my new ward agreed to watch my toddler at night (does she know kids turn into hyenas after 5?) so I could go to a doctor's appointment, I knew I had found my occasion! I followed the recipe exactly, with the exception of the butter. I can never seem to keep unsalted butter on hand, so I went ahead and used salted butter and then cut the salt down to about 1/8 tsp. to compensate. I did use a 1/4 cup measuring cup to portion out my cookies, but it only made 13 doing it that way, not 16.

Oh, and we did eat these for breakfast...but I definitely wouldn't recommend it. These are more of a you-finished-your-lunch-have-a-treat kind of thing. Oh, and I cooked mine for 20 minutes, and it was perfect. Every oven is different, donchaknow!
One more thing - I used store-brand chocolate chips because I'm cheap like that, and it's what's in my pantry!

OK, so I didn't follow it exactly...but that's about as exact as I get people. Work with me here!



Robyn Lee's Killer Big Fat Chewy Chocolate Chip Breakfast Cookies
- makes 16 -
Adapted from Allrecipes.com
(After which, I adapted it from Serious Eats)

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 cup semisweet chocolate chunks chopped from a Green & Black's organic bittersweet chocolate bar (any high-quality bar like Vahlrona or Sharffenberger's would do)
Procedure
1. Preheat the oven to 335 degrees. Grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.
2. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended. Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended. Stir in the chocolate chips by hand using a wooden spoon. Drop cookie dough 1/4 cup at a time onto the prepared cookie sheets. Cookies should be about 3 inches apart.
4. Bake for 23 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

Granola

At one point last year I checked my food storage- between Cannery cases, Costco bags from my parents, and cartons purchased at the grocery store I had WAY TOO MUCH oats. So, rationally, I looked for a way to mix it with sugar and oil and eat it for breakfast.

Following is the recipe I found online, and then modified myself. In keeping with previous recipes, I find the most basic one I can and mess around until we like it. You can mix in any dried fruit you like after baking- we used dried cannery apples this time. In the past I've used raisins, Craisins, and dried goji berries.

This is different than the granola you'll find at the store- because it's so much lower in fat and sugar it doesn't form sugary clumps or clusters- each oat is coated, but separate. Of course it's good in milk, but my favorite is to eat it over a bowl of yogurt. As the nuts cook with the oat mixture they roast a little bit, giving this a delicious nutty taste. Pecans are my favorite nuts to use, mostly because I had a lot of broken ones in my freezer left over from this endeavor last Christmas.

Granola

Ingredients:
4 cups oats
1 and 1/2 cups nuts
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 to 1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup honey
1 tsp vanilla
1 and 1/2 cups dried fruit

1. In a large bowl stir together first 5 ingredients (the dry ingredients)
2. Either in microwave or on stove heat together vegetable oil and honey. Remove from heat and add vanilla- I like to add a little more than it calls for.
3. Pour liquid over oat mixture and stir to coat well. Spread on a 15x10" jelly roll sheet (baking pan with sides) and bake at 300 degrees for 40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes.
4. Let cool and put in storage container- add fruit, mix, and seal. Will keep for a week at room temperature or 3 months in the freezer.
   

Crunchy Mushy Pudding Treat

So imagine this scenario if you will:

You are sitting at your computer when suddenly it occurs to you: It's dessert time.

You aren't sure how you know, but you are certain beyond any doubt that it is dessert time, that sacred and holy time in which our bodies must be given a sweet and satisfying treat or we will never sleep well, have nightmares and probably be eaten by the boogyman who lives under our bed and in our closet AT THE SAME TIME (his dipresence adds to the holy scary factor)

You go upstairs and your family has eaten the last of the pie. That's ok it was a terrible pie anyways. BUT there is a bigger problem. The only ice cream left is a small dab of strawberry. Not enough to eat a milkshake and not good enough to eat alone. This is a predicament.

Open fridge.
Stare.
Close fridge.
Open freezer.
Stare.
Close freezer.
Wander around aimlessly in a lost and deeply restless manner.
Open fridge.

...well you get the idea.

Suddenly, a light bulb appears! Oh yes folks, grand ideas are appearing... still a little fuzzy.. what is it... OH YES! It's PUDDING!

That is brilliant! A GRAND idea!

Wait... no it's not. It's pudding. Anyone who calls pudding grand has pathetically lowered their standards beyond reasonable bounds.

Ok pudding is a building block. A mushy, passably flavorful building block in the grand idea that must occur lest we be eaten by the dipresent boogyman (hope you didn't forget about him did you? Your life IS on the line you know)

We need more flavor... bananas? Ok sure but that texture! You have two mushy things together it'll never work... you should only be eating something that mushy at the beginning and the end of your life, basically when you don't have teeth.

I have teeth, so it won't work.. we need something more.... something... oh. Yes. I see. I got it. I know the answer. Wouldn't you like to know the answer? Luckily I'm a really nice guy. I'll tell you.

Check it ya'll

Crunchy Mushy Pudding Parfait of Excellence

Ingredients:
Pudding (I used Vanilla, and I think it'll work best)
Banana
Chocolate Chips (Or broken Hershey's, or any crunchy chocolate in small bits)
Hershey's Chocolate Syrup (Optional)

In a suitable parfait dish, put a sufficient layer of pudding in the bottom (~half an inch)
On top of pudding, put one layer of sliced banana (Thin slices)
On top of banana put a smattering of chocolate chips, not quite enough to cover the banana layer.
On chocolate chips put a bit of Hershey's syrup, again do NOT make a full layer, just squeeze a bit in for flavor.
New layer of pudding.
etc.

I recommend only using the Hershey's on every OTHER banana/chocolate layer (Which for most parfait dishes will only mean the bottom of the two layers ;-)

On the top do some sort of nice looking finish (It'll taste better, trust me). I did 2-3 slices of banana scattered (not a layer) and 4-5 chocolate chips just thrown on.

It was beautiful (padres can attest) and it was delicious (I can attest).

Best of all, I'll be able to wake up tomorrow morning. Take that boogyman, your days are through!

ho ho ho

Easy Tasty Cookies

Ok, so I'm far from home. I want to make a treat. I don't have a lot of cash, I need to please a lot of people. What should I make?

Whippersnappers!

My sister found this recipe, and we've been playing with it for the past 10 years. Are you ready for this?

Characters -
One box cake mix (lemon and chocolate are both delicious) (18.25 oz size)
One large egg, beaten
2 cups Cool-Whip
1/2 cup powdered sugar
Combine cake mix, beaten egg and Cool-Whip in a large bowl.

The mix can be chilled at this point for easier handling.

When you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350, roll the mix into walnut-sized balls, coat in powdered sugar, and place on a parchment lined or greased cookie sheet, two inches apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes until set, but not brown.

Cool on a wire rack, and watch them disappear! This makes a lot of cookies - enough for half a dozen women to scarf at a playdate before their husbands even know they are there! (About 3 dozen, if you want to get technical!)

Or you can share. Your choice.