Mixing it Up: Inside Out Peanut Butter Cups for Serious Eats

Chocolate peanut butter cups are undoubtedly one of the finer things in life.

But I have my reservations about the construction: the chocolate gets your hands messy and there never seems to be enough peanut butter.

So what would happen if you turned a peanut butter cup inside-out? To find out, I started by using a peanut butter bar cookie crust recipe for the outer shell, then filled them with a peanut butter fudge mixture, thus increasing the peanut butter-to-chocolate ratio dramatically.

While the crumbly nature of the crust doesn't make them much neater to eat, taste-wise, it's a whole new ballgame. It's like the fudgy center is getting a big peanut butter bear hug from the cookie coating. And it's delicious.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Sweet Seconds: Leftover Easter Candy Cookies for Serious Eats

In my mind, Easter candy falls into one of two categories. There are the show pieces—the chocolate bunny, Cadbury Creme eggs, and those addictive Reese's peanut butter eggs, for instance—which tend to disappear rapidly. And then there's the filler—the jelly beans, the Peeps, and those little malted eggs, which look pretty in the basket but aren't consumed quite as quickly.

But I feel for the filler, really I do, and so I tried my hand at designing a desirable delivery vehicle for these assorted pastel leftovers: the Leftover Easter Candy Cookie. I started out with a basic drop cookie recipe and added in a cup of assorted leftovers, including Easter corn, jelly beans, cut-up Peeps, and malted egg candies.

To read the full entry and find the recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Sweet Sandwich: Peeps Fluffernutter for Serious Eats

Oh, don't act surprised. It was really only a matter of time before Peeps, those pillowy pastel harbingers of spring, met the classic marshmallowy sandwich called Fluffernutter.

What may surprise and delight you, however, is that in my version, the peanut butter-and-Peeps mixture is sandwiched between two hefty slices of pound cake rather than white bread, to form a delectably decadent dessert sandwich.

The pound cake works beautifully on several levels—the sweetness works harmoniously with the Peeps, and the rich butteriness is perfect with the peanut butter. In fact, I'd like to humbly submit that it just may be the perfect lunchtime followup to a breakfast of Cadbury Creme Eggs Benedict.

For the full writeup and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Spring in Your Step: Springtime Cutout Sandwich Cookies for Serious Eats

In case you couldn't tell by the proliferance of Cadbury Creme Eggs, Peeps, and pastel-hued jelly beans in grocery stores, Easter is coming.

Now, it's not to say that I don't enjoy these adorable seasonal sweets, but when push comes to shove, I simply prefer baked goods. So, in an effort to get a piece of that pastel-hued cuteness while also enjoying a delicious, buttery, and substantial sugary treat, I've created these Springtime Cutout Sandwich Cookies.

These were made using an adorable Springtime Linzer Cookie kit I found at Cookies, a thimble-sized shop chock full of all manner of cookie cutters in Seattle, but I veered a bit from the traditional Linzer cookie construction. These sweet sandwiches start with a buttery sugar cookie cutout recipe, filled with lemon curd for a sweet and rich zing, and topped with pastel sugar for a sweet springtime palette.

For the full writeup and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

The Bomb: Filled Cupcakes a la Smitten Kitchen for Serious Eats

Here in Seattle, every March something extremely joyful happens: all of the cupcake shops debut their individual takes on boozy Irish-themed cupcakes.

However, for those of you not in Seattle (or someplace that embraces Irish-inspired cake flavors as readily), fear not, because I've found a recipe to share.

It's an adaptation of the now legendary version first found last year on Smitten Kitchen, with some small liberties taken. Amazingly, while the alcohol is very much present in these cakes, it somehow manages to not be overpowering, instead imparting sophisticated flavor to the frosting and filling and a decadent fudgy texture to the cake.

For the full writeup and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Big Funfetti: Funfetti Cake Mix Cookie Sandwiches for Serious Eats

Cookie sandwiches involve so much awesome. In one single unit, you to get two cookies and delicious filling, and you get to eat them all at once.

But there's always room for more awesome at the cookie sandwich party, as I learned when I prepared a batch of sweet sandwiches using Betty Crocker's Cooky Book and the finest of cake mixes—the kind with a built-in rainbow. What better pick-me-up for dull winter days than a double dose of dense, moist, lightly tangy, cakey cookies sandwiched with rich, sweet, buttery frosting?

Here's the recipe, but you can also find it (and more) over at Serious Eats!

Funfetti Cake Mix Cookies

Ingredients

For the cake mix cookies

• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese
• 1 egg
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 package funfetti or rainbow chip cake mix

For for the filling (optional):

• 1 1/2 sticks of butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 to 4 cups confectioners' sugar, depending on your desired consistency

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Note: the original cookie recipe called for 8 to 10 minutes at 375°F, but I found that baking slightly longer at 350°F worked better for my cookies.
2. Cream the butter and cream cheese. Blend in egg and vanilla.
3. Add cake mix in two parts, mixing well (it will be a super thick batter—if it is too stiff, add a small quantity of heavy cream to the batter and mix well).
4. Using a small cookie scoop, drop balls of cookie dough on an ungreased baking sheet. Leave about 2 inches between the cookies.
5. Bake for 8 to 12 minutes, or until lightly browned. Cool cookies for at least 15 minutes on the cookie sheet before transferring to a wire cooling rack; the cookies are very delicate when they first come out of the oven and they will break if you try to transfer them too soon.
6. Once completely cool, add a generous dollop of frosting to the bottom of half the cookies, and then sandwich the rest of the cookies on top to form something that vaguely resembles a whoopie pie, but tastes like something else entirely.
7. If you want the filling, go ahead and prepare it by mixing the butter until fluffy in your electric mixer; add the vanilla and then the confectioners' sugar, bit by bit, until it has reached your desired consistency. Thin with cream or milk if desired, and adding a few drops of pink food coloring never hurts.

Peppermint Sweet: Homemade Thin Mints a la Baking Bites for Serious Eats

Smug, smug little Girl Scouts. Those sweet little sugar pushers can be found all over around this time of year, lurking outside of drugstores and markets with their addictive little missives of sweet cookies.

Oh, they seem so friendly and accommodating now. But what happens in a month or so, when they're gone and you've got a serious jonesing for some Samoas or Thin Mints?

You make your own, that's what you do.

Armed with a recipe from Baking Bites, I tested out a batch of my favorite, Thin Mints. While I wouldn't say that they're a clone version of the boxed kind (the texture is a little different, and the taste a little...fancier), they will indeed give you that much needed fix. Now if only I could figure out how to make a little plastic sleeve for them to fit in...

For the full writeup and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Up, Up, and Away: 7-Up Cake for Serious Eats

Up is a sweet film of dreams realized: by tying thousands of balloon to his home, main character Carl Fredricksen sets out to fulfill his lifelong desire to see the great wide world. But when it comes to a cake inspired by the movie, you're going to want all of the charm but none of that floating away business.

While this 7-Up Cake may be infused with the buoyant lemon-lime soda bubbles, it's far from light-as-air. This is actually a rich, decadent pound cake made with five sticks of butter.

Coloring the cake a gentle sky blue and topping it with a fluffy, cloud-like coating of rich coconut frosting lends an air of drama when it's sliced into, and a garnish of lollipops (the "balloons") add a bit of whimsy. So good, it'll disappear into thin air.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Egg-stra Special: Cadbury Creme Eggs Benedict for Serious Eats

Eggs Benedict is like pleasure overload: savory little stacks of delicious excess, topped with a crowning glory of Hollandaise.

But could this brunch classic be recreated in a totally sweet form?

You bet your bottom silver dollar pancake. It's time to say hello to a new classic: Cadbury Creme Eggs Benedict. It combines all of the excess of the savory dish, but in completely sweet form, comprised of stacks made of doughnut, brownie, melty Creme Eggs (complete with oozing yolk!), and a topping of rich frosting, all accompanied by a mound of fried pound cake to give the effect of side potatoes.

It's a sweet egg-stravaganza.

• 2 Cadbury creme eggs
• 1 plain cake doughnut
• 1 brownie, the fudgier the better
• 1 large slice pound cake, cut into small cubes
• 1 tablespoon butter, such as Challenge Butter
• Red sugar sprinkles, to garnish

Prepare your plate. Slice your doughnut in half; place the halves, cut side up, side by side on your plate.

Cut your brownie in half, the way that you would slice a bagel (so that you have two fully sized but thin brownie pieces). Either cut or shape each piece into a circle so that it is slightly smaller in circumference than the doughnut halves. Place the circles on top of the doughnut halves.

Prepare the Creme Eggs. The idea here is to get them lightly melty, but not so much that the yolk oozes out. I found that the best way to do this was to either put them on a sheet of aluminum foil atop a baking sheet and put them in either a toaster oven on high or a preheated moderate oven for about a minute. As soon as the tops of the chocolate eggs starts to get a bit shiny, remove them from heat, and very carefully (so as to not puncture the chocolate and let the yolk ooze out) transfer each egg to the top of your two prepared brownie and doughnut stacks. Top with lightly melty frosting.

Sprinkle each finished stack with red sugar sprinkles; serve immediately.

For the full post and how-to, visit Serious Eats!

An Educaketion: An Oscar-inspired Battenberg Cake for Serious Eats

Really, Battenberg Cake is a perfect food analogy for the film An Education.

It starts out with an unlikely pairing—only instead of May-December lovers, it's two cakes, one a light, girly pink; the other a rich, refined Madagascar vanilla (which in my version includes worldly splash of amaretto).

And like the film's main characters, both flavors breathe new life when put together. You get a delicious shot of sweetness from the pink cake paired with the intensity of the amaretto-infused cake. It's beautifully rounded out by a thick slather of preserves (and, if you're feeling decadent, a smear of buttercream frosting), all blanketed in a rich layer of marzipan.

Of course, unlike the film, you don't have to take the bitter with this sweetness. Dramatic, layered with sweet subtleties, and ever-so-British: consider this An Educaketion.

For the full writeup and recipe, visit Serious Eats!