Banana Whoopie Pies

It would seem that I’ve been making a lot of cookies recently! I suppose that it’s that time of year! This year I wasn’t in the mood for the regular old boring cookies. I didn’t want to make raspberry thumbprints and chocolate mint cookies, I wanted to break out of the mold. Go cookie crazy! Throw tradition to the wind and have some fun. So I started out with the dark chocolate hearts, wonderful. Then I thought, let’s get nuts! It’s whoopie pie time!

The whoopie pie. If you haven’t heard, it’s the cupcake of 2010. They’re getting more hits on Google than “What to buy my husband for Christmas.” That’s pretty popular! If you’ve never had one, then apparently you’ve been hiding under a house all year long. Now is your time to embrace the whoopie pie.

Wikipedia describes them as “made of two round mound-shaped pieces of chocolate cake, sometimes pumpkin cake, with a sweet, creamy filling or frosting sandwiched between them.” Cake mounds? Cream filling? Sounds right up my alley! How about you?

Dark Chocolate Heart Cookies

“These cookies are great, but they would be so much better if they were shaped like tanks.” That’s right people, my taste testers are getting picky about the shape of the cookies I feed them. Another mentioned that the hearts were cheesy. If you guessed that my taste testers were boys, then you were correct. If you guessed that they were twelve-year-olds, then you would be wrong. Apparently the shape of the food still affects the taste, even when you are in your mid-twenties.

What the boys didn’t realize is my thought process behind the heart cookies. Other than cutting squares or triangles, hearts are the shape to use when you want to get the most out of your dough. I hate re-rolling dough and the hearts fit together like a little puzzle. So few dough scraps!

These cookies are super rich and dark. My taste testers decided that they would be good as sandwich cookies or with a little frosting. If you love dark chocolate then these cookies are perfect on their own. If you like your chocolate a little on the sweeter side, then choose a dark chocolate bar with a lower percentage of cacao. I inherited this chocolate bar after it was bought by accident, by a coworker looking for a sweet fix. FYI, 90% cacao is not good for eating, but it is amazing for baking.

Pork, Cranberry and Pear Salad

Oh boy! I just had the best dinner! In order to properly feed myself, and make my mom happy, I decided to make a real dinner. My mom is slightly concerned with my wacky eating habits of late. Let’s just say yesterday for breakfast I had a slice of chocolate tart. For breakfast this morning I had some cookies. Several nights last week dinner consisted of lettuce.

Now it’s not that I’m a bad eater, it’s just that there was no food in my house! I returned from my thanksgiving vacation Monday afternoon to a slice of bread and some far-past expiration milk. There were a few onions and maybe some mustard. It was a sad state of affairs. This is how things usually are when I return from a trip, except this time I came back with a cold. It slowly took over and made me lazier and lazier. I managed to buy some milk and cereal from the Dollar General across the street, but beyond that, I had eggs.

After some concern from my mom (talking about protein and nutrients) I decided I should probably go to the grocery store. Armed with this recipe, I bought my ingredients, substituting here and there for what was one sale (I’m cheap too!). I was not disappointed; this was the best meal I had in a while. Please enjoy, and eat your vegetables!