Why did it take me 30 years to discover shortbread? I mean, I’ve had shortbread before, but I’ve never truly appreciated its greatness until I made these cookies. They’re crispy on the outside, but melt in your mouth once you bite into them, and they’re light enough that you can eat 5 without even thinking about it. And the addition of chocolate is never a bad thing. With Christmas just around the corner, I plan to bring these to every gathering and cookie exchange.
You know how they say that you should never go to the grocery store when you’re hungry? I don’t know who they are, but apparently, they knew what they were talking about. Chocolate and mint are one of my favorite flavor combinations, so when Christmas time comes around, my will power at the grocery store is almost non-existant. Needless to say, I walked out of there with a package of Cool Mint Oreos. I’m not usually a big fan of pre-packaged cookies, but I’m not going to specify how many of these I ate in the car on the way home. Whatever was left got turned into these cupcakes.
In order to get the frosting to match the Oreo filling, I used a couple of drops of Americolor Leaf Green food coloring. I didn’t want to taint the pretty frosting with cookie pieces, so I mixed pieces of the cookies into the batter.
I used a no fuss one bowl chocolate cupcake recipe. It makes a lighter cupcake, which is a nice contrast to the crunchy cookie pieces. These cupcakes are egg and dairy free. I used organic unrefined sugar in the cupcakes. However, the Oreos contain refined sugar, so depending on your stance on sugar, these can be considered vegan.
After all of the comments I have received, I am no longer saying these are vegan. I will say that the cupcakes themselves are vegan (yes, there is such a thing as vegan powdered sugar). As for the oreos, that’s up to you to decide. You could always use Newman O’s instead, or if you wanted to be really sure, just make your own.
Happy National Cake Day! When I began writing this post, I had no idea that today was National Cake Day. In fact, this cake came about by accident. As you may know, I’m no genius when it comes to baking pies. I made this one from scratch a few weeks ago, and was quite proud of myself. It’s one of my favorite recipes of all time, and last week, I had a chance to make it again. While I adore this recipe, it uses 9 egg yolks (yes, it is quite decadent)! There are only so many egg whites I can eat for breakfast, and my freezer was already full of them from previous chocolate pie and pudding recipes, so I thought about using them to make a cake.
After looking through some old cookbooks, I came across a coconut cake that sounded heavenly. All too often, coconut cakes are just vanilla cakes that are buried under a pile of toasted coconut. This cake claimed to real coconut flavor, both in the cake and the frosting. And guess what? It called for exactly 9 egg whites!
This recipe uses what is called the “reverse creaming method,” in which the ingredients are mixed together in a different order than the traditional creaming method. It was an idea that was introduced by Rose Levy Berenbaum, author of The Cake Bible. For a more detailed explanation, click here. This was my first time using this method, and it won’t be my last. The cake was so light and fluffy, but not in a weird airy boxed mix kind of way.
