What’s in the Middle? The White Stuff.

Let’s not talk about the events of last night.

So instead I’ll just talk about the food that I just happen to make for this particular Sunday night ;)

I made two items to bring over to my friends place, and one I’ve been dying to make since I first tried it back in September!

Pizza Monkey Bread!!  Elina made it for a little after-work shin-dig that she hosted back in September, and ever since then I knew it would be the PERFECT food to serve for a party!  I’d been waiting for a good opportunity and I' finally decided that the Superbowl (there, I said it) would be the best excuse to eat little hot balls of dough stuffed with cheese and pepperoni! 

I used the same recipe she used, from Confessions of a Foodie Bride, and since I was also making a dessert, I opted to purchase the dough and sauce to make my life easier.

I grabbed a ball of plain and a ball of multi-grain pizza dough from Whole Foods.

I also used the suggestion of weighing out the pieces for uniformity.

Brian helped me with this one, and as I divided up the dough, he started flattening each piece and filling them with a slice of pepperoni and a chunk of mozzarella cheese.

Teamwork!!  I then coated each piece in garlic butter, filled up the Bundt pan, wrapped it in plastic wrap and headed to our friend’s apartment where I baked it up hot and fresh!

Not surprisingly this was a huge hit!!  I mean, who doesn’t love pizza in bite size form!      

I also made something on the sweet side.

I knew I wanted to make a dessert, and this wasn’t actually my first choice, but my friends rave about these cookies from Flour Bakery and I have wanted to try my hand at them.  Plus I love making something I know people will get excited about!

Oh-Oreo’s, Oh-Oreo’s,   What’s in the Middle?   The WHITE stuff! (sung to the tune of NKOTB “The Right Stuff”…no?  no one ever sang that version back in the day?)   Nevermind…

Here in the Boston area, Flour bakery is pretty well known for these replica’s of the iconic chocolate wafer cookie.  In fact, they sell out often!  I remember one time I went to Flour, and really wanted an Oreo…the line was so long and in the time I was waiting someone phoned in an order and took them ALL!!  I WAS SO SAD!

No more sadness now, because these are actually quite simple to make.

Lucky for you the recipe is online here!  The cookbook also has an option for a Peanut Butter filling, so I did half and half. 

The dough comes together pretty fast and easy. 

Lots of butter and chocolate!

I used salted butter for everything, and just omitted the salt that the recipe called for…I usually do this when I bake and everything comes out great.

I forgot to grab a picture before I added the dry to the wet ingredients, but the butter, chocolate, sugar, egg mixture solidifies fast!  It’s still very soft and workable, I was just surprised.

At this point the recipe recommends diving in with your hands to mix the dough.  Make sure you WASH YOUR HANDS GOOD FIRST…then dig in!

Once the dough is mixed, it sits out for an hour to firm up.  Then form into a log on wax paper.

The recipe calls for a 2.5” diameter roll…I wanted my cookies smaller so I just made my log longer and narrower…mine was just under 2” in diameter.

At this point it’s hard to get the long nice and round, mine was more of a long rectangle.  But once you wrap it up you can roll it out a bit, and from there you chill it for 2 hours, taking it out every 15min or so to roll it and make sure it’s not getting a flat bottom.

I didn’t do that every 15 min…I did it maybe 2 or 3 times during the 2 hours and it turned out just fine.

I did this the night before, and this was my dough log the next morning.

(so many jokes…)

Ready to be sliced into cookies!

I actually used my measuring tape and scored off 1/4” slices to get them roughly the same size.

I found that my cookies baked up in 16-18 min.

Once cool, I arranged them in pairs, and tried to match them up by size.  They are all fairly uniform but some definitely were bigger than others.

The filling was a simple butter cream…my FAVORITE kind!

Your standard butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, milk.  Classic.

I filled about half of the cookie pairs.

Then used the same bowl to whip up the PB filling.

I can’t pick a favorite, both were delicious!!

My Oreo-loving friends were thrilled! 

Kind of want one right now with some milk…  Good night!! 

What was the best thing you ate last night???