Sweetheart Whoopie Pies

Valentines Day is just around the corner and so I decided to let that inspire this week's baked goodie! I was talking to one of my friends who is an administrative assistant about what the perfect dessert for this holiday would be and we found it! They are red and cute and sweet and so perfect for this holiday!! These mini sandwiches are basically just red sugar cookies filled with a sweet buttercream icing. They are easy to create and will be the perfect addition to any Valentines Day present.

Here's the recipe:

For the cookie dough:

Ingredients:
4 cups sifted all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup butter (1 1/2 stick)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Heart shaped cookie cutters

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a bowl, stir together flour and baking powder. In another bowl, beat butter with sugar until fluffy and light. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour mixture, a third at a time to make a stiff dough. Divide dough into 4 pieces. Roll out a portion of cookie dough to 1/4 inch thick. Cut out heart shapes using cookie cutters. Place on lightly greased or nonstick cookie sheets. Bake until lightly golden, about 10 minute, rotating baking sheet halfway through cooking time. Cool completely on pans about 5 minutes, transfer to cooling racks and cool completely before decorating.

For the icing:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons water
3 to 4 drops red food coloring, plus more as needed until you get the red color you want

Directions:
In a small bowl, mix sugar and water to form a thick, smooth icing. Stir in food coloring to reach desired shade.

To assemble the cookies, just take one heart shaped cooke and turn it upside down. Pipe a small amount of icing around the edges of the cookie. Take another red cookie and place it on top.

See? Soo simple! These cookies are so cute and will make anyone you give them to feel good because you made them yourself!

Butter Pound Cake

This past week was my aunt's birthday and it is a tradition every year that I make her a pound cake. It's her favorite kind of cake! This is the recipe that I have used every year since I began making these for her and I haven't changed it a bit! Pound cake is great to make in a hurry because it doesn’t use many ingredients and you don’t have to worry about icing! This recipe, specifically, makes a rich, dense cake – it is the perfect pound cake!

Here is the recipe...

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter
• 6 eggs
• 3 cups white sugar
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 pint heavy whipping cream
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons lemon extract

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease and flour one 9 or 10 inch tube pan.
2. With an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time and mix well.
3. Introduce the flour, one cup at a time while adding cream a little at a time until all flour and cream is mixed in well.
4. Add the vanilla and lemon flavoring and blend well. Pour batter into prepared pan.
5. Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) for 1-1/2 hours or until center springs back from small amount of pressure. Immediately turn out on cake rack to cool.

Some tips to remember when making this cake:

• This recipe makes 14 servings. You can modify for however many servings you need.
• Use name brand sugar. This may sound kind of odd. But name brand sugar is usually ground differently that store brand sugar. The generic sugar is generally more finely ground which leads to more sugar per cup, which can cause the cake to fall (and nobody wants that!)

Calhouns Banana Pudding

Where I live, there is a restaurant called Calhouns. It's not a national restaurant so they aren't everywhere. They have a dessert on their menu that is an absolute decadence. The first time I ordered it, I thought it would be some pudding, vanilla wafers and bananas. But what the waiter brought to my table was sooo much better. While it was a simple southern dessert - banana pudding,  they had definitely put a spin on it. Instead of pudding mix, they used cheesecake filling mix. Instead of vanilla wafers, they used white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies! It took me a while, but I got the recipe. So here it is...



Ingredients:

16 oz. Instant cheesecake filling
5 cups Milk
1 1/2 oz. Whipping cream
13 Macadamia Nut Cookies
5 Large bananas (peeled & sliced in 1/4" discs)
3 cups Chantilly cream

Directions:

Mix the instant cheesecake mix with milk and whole whipping cream
Refrigerate to set.

Break cookies into pebble sized pieces and line the bottom of a 2" line pan with 18 of them

Put the filling on top of the cookies spreading it evenly gently without shifting the crumbs

Evenly distribute banana slices over pudding
Break up seven more of the cookies and evenly distribute them over the banana slices
Top with Chantilly cream. Cover and refrigerate before serving


This recipe is so easy. You don’t need a degree in forensic science to figure it out. It's basically just building the layers. But it is sooo yummy! The recipes are common, everyday products. For those of you who don’t know what Chantilly cream is, let me explain. It is a French cream used to fill pastries. You only need three ingredients to make this cream: heavy cream, white sugar, and vanilla extract. Just put them in a mixing bowl and beat on high speed until soft peaks are formed.