Whoopie Gluttony! and a post-script question...

In the summer of 2009, I moved to Toronto for graduate school, bringing my relationship with my boyfriend into that hellish realm of long-distance. During my time in Toronto, or TO, I would travel to Michigan to spend time with my wonderful man. During my visits and throughout my time now spent living with him in this fair state, I've come across something peculiar; whoopie pies. In all my travels and lives spent in Canada and Minnesota, I'd never even heard of these. During this same time, I have also not eaten one since the majority of places who offer baked goods only provide crisco, cheap ingredients, and a severe lack of love.

So I made my own. Whoopie! (this whoopie is brought to you in part by...)

Look at it! Just look at it! What a beautiful machine that will help with my carpel tunnel and provide a far-from-endless amount of entertainment! So, crass lady, what did you do with it?

I mixed some shit.

First I did the standard creaming of wet things. I took the shortening (something I hardly ever use), butter, sugars and mixed them right up without breaking a sweat, then adding the eggs and vanilla. I also got to learn the valuable lesson of scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl...

Whoa, look at her go! Whhhoooooopieee!
I'll stop that now.
I then mixed the dry ingredients and made the filling, adding the dry to the buttery business in the electronic mixer.

This is essentially cake batter made thicker so that you can make drops of it onto a parchment lined cookie sheet. You then just pop them in the oven and make what are really just tiny cakes. While they're baking, make the filling and get ready to spread some cheesy, fatty, sugary joy all over your creation.

Mmmmmmm. This mixture is cream cheese, butter, sugar, vanilla, and I added some maple syrup because, well, that should be added to just about everything. Then once the pies had cooled, the smearing began and overly large and delicious whoopie pies came to be.

When making the chocolate halves, I used a standard tablespoon for dolloping the cake batter. I think these would have been perfect if I'd used standard teaspoons instead. They were very yummy, but were a bit too much. As far as taste goes though, I certainly brought everyone to flavor country.

Post-script: I would really like to make this blog popular and while I have been researching how, I would greatly appreciate any feedback you might have to help me improve this. Please comment below with your suggestions and criticisms!

Hey. How you doin? Been a while...

Like the title says, it's been a while. Work has been extremely busy, which has left me too tired to either post or bake. I also went here

Oh Toronto. The place I hate to love and love to hate. I lived there for about a year for grad school (yup, I'm educated...I think) and lived just around the corner from where this picture was taken. This is the ice rink at Christie Pits Park and I just love the view of Canadians ice skating with the CN Tower in the background. It broke my heart that I wasn't able to walk along this stretch of road at night when all the lights are lit up. There's nothing quite like it.

Anyways, what the fuck have I baked? Well this post is somewhat of a deviation from the norm; I made Chex Mix. Not my usual sugary offering, but Chex Mix is delicious and does involve using the oven. It counts. I swear.

This is my boyfriend's mom's recipe and stems from the archaic 1950's era when butter and salt were the staples of the American diet. That's changed, right? Right? There are a lack of photos in this post due to the same friend who comes over all the time. Here is proof of his existence.

Someone like that in your home would most certainly distract you. I'm just sayin. Now back to the Chex Mix.

This is an extremely easy recipe and results in an excessively salty snack. Suffice it to say, I love the shit. There is a LOT of butter, Worcestershire Sauce, Seasoning Salt, salted peanuts, AND pretzels. This stuff is seriously heart clogging and I'm sure it's correlated with the rates of heart disease amongst baby boomers. So let's keep those numbers up and keep winning!

So there you have the mix of Chex or Chex Mix (hahahaha!!!!!! yeah!) alongside its buttery, salty harlot. In a large roasting pan, you get the cereal and pretzels all mixed up (hahaha) and then pour the butter-salt-sauce over it. Use the spatula and do your best to coat as much of the mixture as possible. Then put it in the over and stir thoroughly every 15 minutes for 45 minutes. In the end you'll have this

A delicious, salty, nutty treat that everyone will love. This batch lasted less than one day and I invite you to take note of the paper towels needed to soak up the excess butter fat that oozes itself down to the bottom, leaving the nastiest, tastiest bits to be eaten last. Enjoy!