Back in the fall, I purchased some 100-calorie peanut butter chocolate bars from Costco as an easy, portable purse snack. These bars was especially handy because I take a zumba dance class on Wednesday nights and I’m always famished on my hour-long bus ride back to our apartment. Being only 100-calories though, the bars never satisfied me after my workout so I wasn’t really that sad once we finished the Costco-sized box a few weeks ago.
Or so I thought. Lately, I couldn’t stop thinking about them. The calorie content may have been pretty miniscule for a post-workout snack, but the taste and the texture was something I couldn’t get enough of. It reminded me of a soft peanut butter puff wheat square with a hint of chocolate. Growing up, I loved homemade puff wheat squares, but I stopped making them a couple years ago when I read about corn syrup being pretty much one of the worst things you can put in your body (thanks Jillian Michaels). Since then I’ve completely sworn off baking with corn syrup, even though I know that I can’t completely avoid eating it (like in the 100-calorie bars).
I realize that I’m a little late on the whole “happy new year” bandwagon. Just a little bit. I had every intention to post this recipe earlier this week, but then life happened. We returned from my parents house, the weather in Toronto took a turn for the worst, Trevor got sick and had to stay home from work and I tried to go to bed at a decent hour to avoid catching his cold. This was all in the span of a little more than a week. All I can say is that I’m so happy it’s the weekend!
I hope that the first little bit of 2014 as been treating everyone well. And for those people who have made New Year resolutions, I hope you’re still on track. In the past, I used to scoff at the idea of waiting until the beginning of the year to make resolutions. Now I believe that anyone who is willing to look at their current situation, acknowledge that they want to make a change and make that first step deserves an applause, no matter what time of year it is.
I’ve made a few resolutions this year and one of them is to be more organized with my blogging. Since it took me six days to write this post, I realize that it’s going to be a long, slow process. But, I figured that writing about my resolution here would be a helpful reminder to get my butt in gear and make some long-term changes.
I must have stopped and restarted this post a thousand times.
Well, that’s obviously an exaggeration, but it was at least 20 times. I’ve pushed and held the delete button so much that I have a permanent dent on my middle finger. And yes, I use my middle finger rather than my index finger to delete text on my keyboard. I was definitely that kid in your class who cheated and on all her typing tests in computer class.
The reason I’ve re-written this post so many time is because I came to the realization that this was going to be my final write-up for 2013 and that I didn’t want to end the year on a negative post. I didn’t want my last post of the year to be about how our oven in our rental apartment malfunctioned and completely fried the first batch of these cookies. I also didn’t want to mention how everyday this week I went to bed at 9:30pm because of how exhausted I was from work. And lastly I didn’t want to complain about how these cookies didn’t really turn out the way I originally planned, but ended up being everything I needed in a snack when I was grumpy, tired and deleting paragraph after paragraph of this blog post.
Despite my large collection of cookie recipes on She Bakes Here, there is one type that I don’t make very often, and that is whoopie pies. The last time I tried to make them was back in 2011 during my first months of blogging. This was also when I was really into making healthy versions of everything, even if it didn’t always taste very good. One of my more common substitutions was full whole wheat flour in the place of regular all-purpose flour and in the end, without fail, the dough would always be dense, resulting in heavier cupcakes, cakes and cookies. I know I had good intentions with my first whoopie pie cookies (made for a bake sale no less….ugggh), but I knew that if I was to try making them again, I would have to ditch the healthy substitutions.
I’m not familiar with any bakeries in Toronto that sell whoopie pies, so making these cookies was definitely a treat. I’ve seen cookbooks dedicated solely to the different varieties that are out there, but seeing as how it’s the holiday season, I felt the need to further exhaust my favourite mint and chocolate flavour combination. Besides, who can turn down what essentially is a beautiful fluffy mountain of mint icing sandwiched between two soft, chocolate cake-like cookies. I’m not even a huge fan of chocolate cake and I’ve already proclaimed my undying love to these cookies.
My December started off with the most epic of recipe fails for She Bakes Here. It was a recipe that was supposed to yield puffy, dark chocolate cookies, only my end result was flat, crispy and very messy little bricks that kind of resembled cookies. I thought something was up when the dough had more of a consistency of very thick brownie batter than dough you should be able to roll and flatten with your fingers, but I thought I could still salvage it with some extra flour and then some time in the fridge to firm up. Nope, the end result was huge disaster. The dough was sticky and a pain to scoop, and then the baked cookies stuck to my non-stick silicone baking mats and crumbled while cooling on the counter.
Trevor offered some sympathy with the idea that at least the cookies smelled good and were still edible, but I wouldn’t wish this experience on anyone. As therapeutic baking can be, it can also be a little frustrating if the end result is not what you were expecting. Especially when it’s an online recipe.
This little disaster freed up the remainder of my Sunday, so in search for a reason to leave the apartment and avoid doing the dishes, we decided to check out the Toronto Christmas Market in the Distillery District. The last time we visited that Market was in 2011 and had thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Since it was December 1st, we also figured that this would be a good way to put us in a festive holiday mood despite all the rain we were experiencing.
Canadian food blogger, baking and eating her way through life. Musical theatre fanatic. Personal finance nerd. Sometimes runner/yogi. Green smoothies are pretty amazing.
