Whoopie Pies

We are not super big on desserts, but every once in a while something just looks too good to pass up.

On the night we made these, we had invited some friends over for dinner. We knew their 5th grade son was a chocolate lover, so we knew we couldn't go wrong with this recipe. They were a hit with both the adults and the kids.

These Devil's food cookies filled with a fluffy marshmallow filling originated in the Northeast around 1925.  The original recipes call for "soured milk" which is buttermilk.  Marc has this strange idea that anything with buttermilk must be good.  The other main ingredient, as you can see in the picture, is butter. Katie thinks anything with butter must be good.  With that combination, how bad could they be??

Many recipes for baked goods include the measurements by weight.  If you have a good kitchen scale, using the weight measurements really do yield the most accurate results.  If your scale has a tare function, it is really easy to add ingredients all to the same bowl. We use our kitchen scale all the time - especially when we're trying to make sure everyone gets even amounts of ice cream.

 The cookies are baked and cooled while the filling is made.  The filling is a combination of marshmallow creme, butter, confectioners' sugar, vanilla, and salt.  The finished products are moist, soft, and rich.  They didn't last long!

Chicken Tagine

Menu:

Chicken Tagine

Herbed Basmati Rice

We saw this prepared on TV, and we were intrigued by the combination of flavors.  A Moroccan tagine is a slow-cooked stew typically made with tougher cuts of lamb or chicken, olives, preserved lemons, and herbs. The slow cooking process is used to tenderize these tough meats.  This is typically made in a clay pot called a tagine.  They can be purchased in specialty kitchen stores.  We don't have one, so we used our dutch oven.

We used chicken thighs for our tagine.  The chicken marinates for 24 hours in garlic, cumin, ginger, paprika, grated onion, and the pulp from preserved lemons.  You can by preserved lemons in some speciality food stores, but we made our own by cooking lemon wedges with salt and water in a 250 degree oven for three hours.  These can be kept in the refrigerator for six months.  The chicken cooks in water, parsley, cilantro, and saffron (which we love!).  You add the chopped green Moroccan olives and the peel from the preserved lemons.  We served this over basmati rice with cilantro and parsley.  It was delicious!