Baby Shower: Oatmeal Cream Pies

I'm having a baby tomorrow! That is something I never thought I'd say or type. It's taken us a long time to get where we are and come tomorrow morning, bright and early, we will be heading to the hospital to bring Baby Boy H into this world. Happy September to me! We have a couple names picked out, but nothing definite. We want to wait to see him to make sure that his name fits him. We are beyond thrilled and blessed and can't wait to meet and see the little Mister. I've loved being pregnant, but it has been difficult and exhausting at times. Despite all that, I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. I will absolutely share my bundle of joy with you all as I know many of you have prayed for this baby as much as I have. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will update as soon as I can, but I can't promise when that will be.

While we are both anxiously awaiting his arrival, I hope you'll enjoy these oatmeal cream pies that I made for Maranda's baby shower last month. Her baby shower was a week after mine and I was asked to bake the sweet treats for everyone. I was honored and happy to do so! I happen to know that Maranda's favorite cookies are oatmeal raisin and she loves strawberries, so I made her these simple and delicious oatmeal cream pies as well as my sister's favorite strawberry birthday cake. Both were well received and devoured. This was a sweet way to welcome Baby N into this world.

I've made these oatmeal cream pies before but it's been awhile. Believe me they were just as good as I remembered. The secret to making cream pies as opposed to cookie sandwiches is that you make them a day ahead of time and refrigerate them to get them nice and soft. This also allows the flavors meld together and the cream filling and the cookie become one. You can certainly adapt this cookie if you want. You can leave out the raisins or add chocolate chips or cinnamon chips, or maybe add dried cranberries or just leave them plain. All versions will be delicious I'm sure. If you try them, I hope you'll come back and let me know how you liked them!

Oatmeal Cream Pies from Quaker and Monica H

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For The Cookies:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup raisins
• 3 cups Quaker Oats, old fashioned, uncooked

For The Filling:

• 8 oz. mascarpone cheese
• 4 oz. cream cheese, softened
• 3-4 Tablespoons honey
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar, sifted

For The Cookies: Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat together butter and sugars til creamy. Add eggs and vanilla, mix well. Add combined flour, soda, cinnamon, salt. Mix til fully incorporated. Stir in oats and raisins.

Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet, then remove to wire rack.

For The Filling: Combine cheeses in a bowl and mix with an electric mixer til creamy and lump free. Mix in desired amount of honey. Then stir in sugar til sweetened to your liking.

To Assemble The Cream Pies: Place about one tablespoon of filling on one cookie and top with an additional cookie. Gently squeeze together to allow the filling to come to the edges. Don't press too hard or the filling will ooze out.

Refrigerate overnight to allow the cookies to soften and the flavors to meld together.

Makes about 24 cream pies.

Baby Shower: Mini Cheesecakes

This is baby shower recipe #2! I thought twice about sharing this recipe with you guys, not because it wasn't tasty, but because I had a few technical difficulties with it. But I had a few requests from guests as the shower to "please post it on your blog" so here it is. There is nothing majorly wrong with it, I'm just a little OCD and was bothered by it's appearance. You see, my cheesecakes sunk in the middle. Some of them weren't so bad, while others had major craters in them and were just plain ugly. I didn't have the heart to serve those to my guests, so we ate those at home and served the better looking ones at the shower.

This recipe comes off the box of my mini cheesecake pan I got from Williams-Sonoma Outlet last year. They were originally $32 each, but were on sale for $14.99, then were marked down another 50%. So I got two pans for half the price of one- score! I've been waiting for just the right occasion to use them, and my baby shower just happened to be it. Of course, you don't really need a special occasion to enjoy mini cheesecakes.

One of my other issues with this recipe was that it made way more than the recipe stated. Normally that's not an issue, but when you have a specialty pan and way too much batter, how are you supposed to bake them? The recipe was supposed to make 12 cheesecakes, but I could have easily gotten 18 out of them. Unfortunately and fortunately, I doubled the recipe. One batch came out fairly decent, the other sunk horribly and the remaining batter got turned into cookies and cream cheesecakes with a whole Oreo acting as the crust. I made those in cupcake liners, which was far easier than using the pan, only not as pretty. It turned out to be a good thing there was extra batter though, because in the end I still had a substantial amount of cheesecakes to serve at the shower.

They actually sunk a lot more than that after they cooled!

As I've mentioned, oh I don't know about 500 times already, my cheesecakes sunk in the middle. Note To Self: I think a way to combat the "souffle" action of the cheesecakes would be to not overbeat the batter and to bake them at a lower temperature for longer. To make up for this, I decided to dollop a little lemon curd in the center and top with fresh berries. No one was the wiser and the little divot actually created a little cup to hold all the toppings in. The Oreo ones were topped with a little sweetened whipped cream. The ones topped with berries disappeared rather quickly so I didn't get to taste those, but the cookies and cream version was creamy and tasty. The sunken ones we had at home were eaten plain, but would have been great with a little pie filling. I also turned a few stragglers into a cheesecake milkshake. Yes, it was good!

Mini Cheesecakes adapted from Williams-Sonoma

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Crusts:

• 1 cup chocolate cookie, vanilla wafer or graham cracker crumbs
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• pinch salt
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Filling:

• 16 ounces cream cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup sugar
• pinch salt

Have all ingredients at room temperature. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly coat cups of 12-cup mini cheesecake pan* with nonstick cooking spray.

To make crusts: In a small bowl, stir together the cookie crumbs, sugar and salt. Add the melted butter and stir until combined. Divide the mixture among the cups and, using your fingertips, press it evenly into the bottom. Bake until the crusts are set, about 10 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cool completely. Reduce the heat to 300’.

To make the filling: In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the flat beater, beat the cream cheese on low speed until smooth, 2 to 3 minutes. Increase the speed to medium-low and add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the cream and beat until incorporated, about 1 minute. Add the sugar and salt and beat until incorporated, about 2 minutes, stopping the mixer occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Pour the batter into the crusts, dividing it evenly among the cups. Bake until the cheesecakes are set, about 20 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cool completely. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours before unmolding.

To unmold, insert the dowel into the hole in the bottom of each cup. Gently push up to remove the cheesecake from the cup. Use a small spatula or butter knife to remove the cake from the metal bottom. If the cheesecakes are sticking to the pan, gently run a toothpick around each cheesecake to loosen it before pushing it out of the cup. Makes 12 mini cheesecakes.

NOTE: This recipe makes more than it states. It should make 12 mini cheesecakes, but I got about 18. So plan accordingly.

*If you want to make these but don't have a mini cheesecake pan, line a standard size muffin tin with paper liners. Proceed with recipe as written above, but bake for 30 minutes or until set. Allow cheesecakes to cool completely in the pan before refrigerating for at least 2 hours or overnight. Served chilled or at room temperature. Makes 12-18 mini cheesecakes.

For Oreo Cheesecakes: Line a standard size muffin tin with paper liners. Place a whole Oreo cookie on the bottom to act as the crust. Pour cheesecake batter over the top of the cookie. Top each (unbaked) cheesecake with about a half teaspoon of crushed cookie crumbs. Bake for 30 minutes or until set. Allow cheesecakes to cool completely in the pan before refrigerating for at least 2 hours or overnight. Served chilled or at room temperature. Makes 12-18 mini cheesecakes.

Baby Shower: Pecan Butter Balls

Here's the first baby shower recipe I promised you. These were pretty amazing tasting so I thought I'd share this recipe first. My neighbors bake these every year at Christmastime along with about 6 other homemade cookies. They make pecan tassies, rugelash, thumbprint cookies and other bite-sized morsels but these are my absolute favorites. I like them so much that when they walk the plate or box of cookies to my door, I immediately eat these first without sharing.

I've always referred to these cookies as Mexican Wedding Cookies, but my grandma and mom said they have to be crescent shaped to be called that, because that's what they're used to. They're essentially the same thing but round. Mexican Wedding Cookies, also known as Russian Tea Cakes, are rich, nutty shortbread cookies rolled in powdered sugar. The cookie is not specifically connected to any one culture, but traditionally they are served to guests at special occasions or holidays because they are made with rich and expensive foods (the richest butter, finest sugar and choicest nuts).

And cheap they are not. I doubled the recipe, and the chopped nuts and butter alone cost about $15. I made these with help from my momma (Thank you Mom!) for thank you favors at my baby shower. Because it was a special day, I wasn't really concerned with the price of making them because I knew they would be homemade and fresher than anything else I could buy on a grocery store shelf. They also were far less expensive to make than other party favors. I needed 25-30 favors so each little gift bag including packaging costs about $1.00. Not too bad!

These little snowball like cookies just melt in your mouth. Once they hit your tongue, the powdered sugar just dissipates. The buttery cookie center is slightly crunchy then they too just melt away. I don't know how else to describe them. They're like lime melt-aways in texture but they're nutty and buttery. The cookie itself has very little sugar in them since they're coated twice in powdered sugar once they're baked. But the final product isn't too sweet, they're just perfect. I used a small ice cream scoop to form the balls, but they could be made even smaller since they puff slightly in the oven. I hope you, too, will make these for your next special occasion or holiday.

Pecan Butter Balls (Mexican Wedding Cookies)

adapted from Cooks Catalog

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• 1 cup unsalted butter, room temp
• 1/4 granulated cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups finely chopped pecans or walnuts
• powdered sugar for coating

Cream butter and sugar together. Add salt and vanilla.

Slowly add the flour to the butter/sugar mixture just until it forms a dough. Add the chopped nuts and mix until just combined.

Roll dough into half inch balls and place on parchment lined cookie sheets about an inch apart.

Bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees F.

As soon as they come out of the oven, roll them in powdered sugar while the cookies are still hot. Be careful because the cookies are extremely hot and fragile. Place cookies on a cooling rack.

Once cookies have cooled completely, roll them in powdered sugar again.

Makes 60-70 cookies.

Hope everyone has a great week. Next recipe: Mini Cheesecakes with lemon curd and berries!

Baby Shower: The Food

I had my baby shower this past weekend! It was truly a wonderful (yet exhausting) day. I'll share all the food with you today then in the next couple posts, I'll share a couple recipes that I made. On the table were also painted wooden frames with copies of sonogram pictures of my little boy from the gestational age of 10-28 weeks. This was my favorite addition to the table.

Here is all the food:

Everything at the shower was homemade by either my mother, my mother-in-law or myself. It was all delicious but this cake was bakery made. It's my all-time favorite cake- Chocolate Italian Cream with chocolate cream cheese frosting and it's just amazing. Oh what I wouldn't do to get my hands on that recipe!

Not everyone that came to the shower liked coconut or pecans (or had allergies) so I also made a vanilla bean bundt cake with strawberries as well. I put it on my Jadeite cake pedestal that I bought on the day I found out I was pregnant with this little guy :-)

These are the adorable napkins that I bought from a local hardware store. I love that they look like onesies and that they stand up. I think people were afraid to use them, so I had a lot left over.

We had limeade punch with a frozen ring of limes and cherries. My mother-in-law said she couldn't find frozen limeade, so she used frozen margarita concentrate (non-alcoholic) instead and I thought it was pretty good!

We had ham and asparagus roll-ups- blanched asparagus wrapped up in deli ham with a schmear of Boursin cheese in between. These make great appetizers in you cut them into bite sized pieces.

These are sausage balls and chunks of fresh pineapple turned into kabobs. This is a spin on bacon wrapped pineapple- also very delicious!

A veggie and cheese tray with homemade Ranch dressing. All that was missing were the cucumber slices that were accidentally left at home.

Deviled eggs- never get tired of these!

Strawberries with Romanoff sauce. Seriously love this stuff!

I made mini cheesecakes but wasn't entirely thrilled with the way they looked. They turned out quite tasty but they sunk in the middle and the recipe made way more than stated. So I had to improvise and made the rest of the batter into Oreo cheesecakes (on the bottom). The plain ones on top were topped with lemon curd and fresh berries. Those got rave reviews but I didn't get to taste them since they disappeared so fast!

For some color for the table I took Hershey miniatures and wrapped them in strips of coordinating scrapbook paper. I think they turned out pretty cute.

Of course our hairy daughter, Autumn, was there. And she took the liberty to sit on the couch since it was vacant and no one else would sit there!

Mr. h and I next to some beautiful orange roses a friend dropped by. I am 29 weeks, 3 days pregnant in this picture.

And these were the favors I made for the shower- powdered sugar coated buttery pecan cookies. These were so good and just melt in your mouth. The recipe came from my neighbor and I will share those with you next week as well.

All in all, it was a wonderful day and we were more than blessed by our friends and our family. Thank you to all who played a part in making our day so special!