Buttery, Nutty, Goodness Me!

Okay, don't take it personally, but I baked since we last spoke. It was entirely on a whim and late at night (so you know that the picture isn't going to be as swell as it was when I baked on Sunday afternoon). I had mentioned before but, darn, do I sound like an addict don't I! Okay, this doesn't really count as "true baking" because I cheated. A lot.

While surfing on the internet, I was interested in the concept of using cake batter to make cookies. So many variations, so many different flavors, but how to pick one? Well, I was going to make pumpkin spice but, as luck would have it, Walmart was out of Spice Cake Mix. I like chocolate as much as the next person, but I like it in limited quantities. This recipe makes a little bit more than a limited quantity. Thusly, chocolate was also out. Yellow Cake and French Vanilla are a little plain but have very admirable traits; they can be wielded and turned into flavorful things. So, Vanilla Cake Mix in hand, I started to hike off down the eisle. And that's when the Butter Pecan Cake Mix caught my eye. How intriguing!

Vanilla lost this round, but it still remains our most favorite flavor. The Vanilla bean; from many origins and yet each one with a delicate, creamy, and (at times) earth aroma and taste. Need I say more?

Back to the cookies though. Most of the recipes call for oil of some kind. I, however, so not use a lot of vegetable oil so it is a bit of a loss if I get an entire container of it. You can, I have read, substitute oils for fruit purees with little flavor loss. But, just in case, what is the harm in picking a fruit puree that is more complementary?

Ingredient no. 2: Pear puree (because you know apple is a little cliche).

Last, but certainly not least, have to take an egg out and make sure that its at room temp.

Mix it all together and drop by the spoonful onto a baking sheet. Everything in my reading suggested that I should have been able to roll the dough. If you like dough-gloves, by all means, go for eet! I, however, like my hands in the useful conformation (getting dough on everything in the kitchen is a little cumbersome) so I dropped by spoonful and made imperfectly shaped cookies. There's just something about irregular cookies that I like. They're kind of like snowflakes; each one is different and unique in its own right.

My apartment smelled like buttery pecan goodness for a solid two hours. Baking, for the win!

Boxed Cake Mix Cookies

Mmm... Pecan buttery goodness.  Apologies for no natural lighting.  That's just what you get when you spontaneously feel like baking short-cut cookies at night after the sun has gone down.  The moon doesn't hit my side of the building until I'm nestled in bed.  I heart you guys, but all of my systems start to give up around 11:00 pm.

You will need:

• 1 pkg Betty Crocker Cake Mix (The possibilities is relatively limited so I can't state that they're endless per se, but rather that the choices are many)
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil (Or vegetable oil substitute of your choosing. It sounds icky, but prune puree has always served me well if you feel like the choices are too great. Also, I use baby food to fill this purpose. Then I eat the rest because fruit is awesome. Though apples out-of-hand can't be beat. More on that earlier.)
• 1 large egg
• Handful of white chocolate chips (For some creative flare!)

How it's done:

1. Preheat the oven up to 350F. (Trust your knowledge of your oven on this one. However you usually set it for a recipe that needs it to be 350F; there's variation in oven sometimes.)
2. Mix all of the ingredients together in a large bowl.
3. Using a small spoon, drop spoonfuls onto a prepared parchment-covered cookie sheet.
4. Place a couple of chocolate chips on the top of the drops. (I used white chocolate chips, but I don't see why you couldn't use those round chocolate discs they have at the bulk food store or nuts of some kind.)
5. Place the cookie sheet in the middle of the oven and bake for 10 minutes. (8-10 minutes, depending. The cookies, if you're using a light mix, should get light brown around the edges and you will know they are done.)
6. Pull them out and let them cool 5 minutes on the cookie sheet then transfer to a rack (still on the paper) to cool completely. (When baking these, I noticed that trying to pull them off of the paper tore them to bits. I'm not saying I was complaining because I got to eat a whole batch of them, but I do learn from my mistakes. In the interest of sharing - and my waistline - I let them cool off completely then peeled them off the paper.)
7. Store in an air-tight container and then spread the wealth!

This recipe was loosely adapted from a handful of different recipes hosted on Allrecipes.com. They all seem to like using different proportions of egg and oil. So, I made a compromised adaptation and was pretty pleased with the results. I would fully encourage you to check out Allrecipes.com for the variety of Cake Mix Cookies (give it a click or search 'Cake Mix Cookies' with the search function). All that said, go forth and bake up a storm mightly crafters of yummy treats! ^_^

p.s. Hopefully, we will be able to have a great heart-to-heart about cookies of many different kinds. I have to bake up some Christmas presents after all!