Recipe for the Cheesiest, Creamiest Macaroni Ever (If you like it that way)

This recipe courtesy of Pioneer Woman Cooks

• 4 cups Dried Macaroni
• 1 whole Egg Beaten
• ¼ cups (1/2 Stick Or 4 Tablespoons) Butter
• ¼ cups All-purpose Flour
• 2-½ cups Whole Milk
• 2 teaspoons (heaping) Dry Mustard, More If Desired
• 1 pound Cheese, Grated
• ½ teaspoons Salt, More To Taste
• ½ teaspoons Seasoned Salt, More To Taste
• ½ teaspoons Ground Black Pepper
• Optional Spices: Cayenne Pepper, Paprika, Thyme

Preparation Instructions

Cook macaroni until very firm. Macaroni should be too firm to eat right out of the pot. Drain.

In a small bowl, beat egg.

In a large pot, melt butter and sprinkle in flour. Whisk together over medium-low heat. Cook mixture for five minutes, whisking constantly. Don’t let it burn.

Pour in milk, add mustard, and whisk until smooth. Cook for five minutes until very thick. Reduce heat to low.

Take 1/4 cup of the sauce and slowly pour it into beaten egg, whisking constantly to avoid cooking eggs. Whisk together till smooth.

Pour egg mixture into sauce, whisking constantly. Stir until smooth.

Add in cheese and stir to melt.

Add salt and pepper. Taste sauce and add more salt and seasoned salt as needed! DO NOT UNDERSALT.

Pour in drained, cooked macaroni and stir to combine.
Serve immediately (very creamy) or pour into a buttered baking dish, top with extra cheese, and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until bubbly and golden on top.

Oreo Recipe

Recipe Courtesy of Smitten Kitchen

Makes 25 to 30 sandwich cookies

For the chocolate wafers:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar [see recipe note]
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) room-temperature, unsalted butter
1 large egg

For the filling:
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) room-temperature, unsalted butter
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Set two racks in the middle of the oven. Preheat to 375°F.
2. In a food processor, or bowl of an electric mixer, thoroughly mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt, and sugar. While pulsing, or on low speed, add the butter, and then the egg. Continue processing or mixing until dough comes together in a mass.
3. Take rounded teaspoons of batter and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet approximately two inches apart. With moistened hands, slightly flatten the dough. Bake for 9 minutes, rotating once for even baking. Set baking sheets on a rack to cool.
4. To make the cream, place butter and shortening in a mixing bowl, and at low speed, gradually beat in the sugar and vanilla. Turn the mixer on high and beat for 2 to 3 minutes until filling is light and fluffy.
5. To assemble the cookies, in a pastry bag with a 1/2 inch, round tip, pipe teaspoon-size blobs of cream into the center of one cookie. Place another cookie, equal in size to the first, on top of the cream. Lightly press, to work the filling evenly to the outsides of the cookie. Continue this process until all the cookies have been sandwiched with cream. Dunk generously in a large glass of milk.

homemade oreos

I've never been a big fan of Oreos - except for those rare times when I crave them and will eat an entire sleeve, dunked generously in cold milk. With Oreos, it's really all about the milk and getting the cookie all squishy before putting it in your mouth.

On the recommendation of one of my readers, I decided to give Smitten Kitchen's Oreo recipe a try. Why not? They were billed as delicious AND super easy to make. A winning combination in my recipe book.

Here's my first observation on the process of making the cookies and their scrumdillyitious filling: for something with such simple ingredients and process of preparation, I sure managed to make a huge mess in my kitchen. What is it with me spilling and slopping stuff? The floor underneath my work space looked like an unexpected snow shower had passed through, with powdered sugar liberally mounded around my feet. Counters were littered with the remnants and dribbles of vanilla (I considered licking that up right from the granite), globs of errant frosting, and all manner of other miscellaneous mess. Not pretty.

The instructions advise that you take rounded teaspoons of the cookie dough, put them on parchment paper placed on a baking sheet and then slightly flatten them with your fingers. I wondered how this was going to turn out, since I'm never precise about size or drawing circles. It was obvious I'd wind up having to match these circles, two by two, in order to create the outsides of an Oreo sandwich. (Because a kid'll eat the middle of an Oreo first and save the CHOCOLATE COOKIE OUTSIDES for last!). And, as long as I was worrying, I couldn't help but wonder if my rounded circles would wind up puffing up to the degree that my cookies would morph into bloated whoopie pies instead. So many things to obsess about!

One thing I found out - it was very hard for me to only take a rounded teaspoon of dough for each circle.  If I followed those instructions, the wad of dough in my hand was absolutely tiny - how could such a small amount of chocolate wafer-to-be possibly be right? Not trusting the directions or, more likely, unable to stop myself from wanting more of something that looked so good, I created a batch of Oreos on Steroids. My cooked cookies were huge - flat but enormous. With each batch, I'd get a little better at restraining myself such that the final cookies to come out looked just about the size of a real Oreo.

Oh my goodness! These turn out soooo good. Just like the real thing...but ever so much better because the cookie isn't rock hard. Take all the wonderful yen and yang of not so sweet cookie coupled with gooey sweet filling and then make it ever so much easier to eat, in the form of a soft and chewable (in about one bite) cookie and you've got a winner.

Macaroni and Cheese

If it ain't broke, you shouldn't try to fix it!

Last night I decided to try a new macaroni and cheese recipe. Here's the deal - I don't even like said dish but Martin loves it. I've used the same recipe for years with usually good results but decided to try a version out of the cookbook Cindy recently gave me. Pioneer Woman Cooks. 

It's a kind of labor intensive recipe in that you can't just put it on and leave the room. Instead, there's a whole lot of whisking going on, to keep the milk from scalding. Mixing that should've involved a flat whisk but, since I don't own one, I had to settle for lots of messy, inefficient whisking by way of my traditional rounded one. 

The whole time I'm stirring away, I dream of the perfect macaroni I'm going to create. Macaroni that will make my usually taciturn husband stand up and shout with glee at my cooking prowess. Macaroni that will absolutely shout out, "MADE WITH LOVE FOR MY BELOVED (REMNANT OF A) FAMILY!!!!!" 

I couldn't take a picture of the process because, in taking time to locate the camera, my sauce would've burned. Plus, for a brief time, I couldn't FIND the camera. Now that brought worry, big time. Did I leave it on the plane Saturday night? If so, could I call American Airlines and ask if they found a very expensive camera in seat 4C? Imagine my relief when, after serving the macaroni, I finally went on to locate the camera. 

As for the results of this macaroni - the sauce seemed very thick, in comparison to what I make. And very, very cheesy. I'm not sure of the reviews. Martin and Tim both ate all that was ladled on their plates (fairly large portions) and Martin even said something about how dinner was good. But, was it one of those formulaic expressions or did he truly mean what he said? A bigger test that this macaroni did NOT pass is the second-helping scenario. Of any food that I make, my macaroni never fails to bring hubby back for another heapin' helping after he's eaten the first. When he ate what I presented and then put his plate on the counter to signal being done, I took that as NOT a good sign. 

Of course, the silly part of all this is that I can't judge what I made since I don't eat macaroni. As I was putting the leftovers into a tupperware container, I did spoon out a biteful just to make sure that it tasted within the realms of edible. And that's pretty much my verdict. Eaten unwarmed, it seemed rather gloppy thick and TOO cheesy for me. And maybe for Martin?

One thing I did learn that can be transferred to my own recipe - the Pioneer Woman "tempers" her egg before adding it to the milk mixture, in order to keep it from cooking when exposed to the heat of the burner. This involves taking just a bit of the milk mixture and adding it to the mixed egg in a small bowl. After the milk and egg are thoroughly mixed and smooth, they can be added to the bigger pot of heating/whisking milk. Worked like a charm.