Panzanella, ella, ella (you knew that was coming.)

I remember specifically the first time I ever saw a recipe for panzanella, I said to myself, “Gross! bread in salad? ugh! croutons! UGH!!!!” It is true that I am not a crouton fan. When I’m eating this nice crunchy leafy watery substance, I don’t want to come upon the hardest, driest, most herbed cube that has ever existed. It’s like you’re floating along on your back in a beautiful cool lagoon and then you hit a dry sandbar, but your momentum doesn’t stop, so you get dragged across the sandbar. Except worse. Croutons! Who came up with them! God I hate them so much!!!!!!

Anyway. Panzanella is a bread salad. It is not a regular salad with croutons. The difference between panzanella and regular salad with croutons is that panzanella is one of the most delightful things that has ever been thought up and salad with croutons is a terrible scourge on the earth.

Also you know what class I failed? Not Exaggerating The Shit Out of Everything 101. Just sayin.

Because bread lightly coated in olive oil and salt and then LIGHTLY toasted and incorporated into a crunchy bounty of vegetables is wonderful. The bread still has enough fluffiness to absorb a little bit of the moisture, but it retains a small amount of crunch. It’s like when you dip toast into egg yolk. It’s that sensation. It’s that glorious glorious perfection of texture sensation.

So don’t be fooled like I was. I was the foolingest fool on the fucking planet of fool, because I’ve lived approximately 27.5 years without making panzanella. PURPOSEFULLY. It’s baffling, really.

Panzanella
from SK who adapted it from Ina Garten

3 tablespoons good olive oil
1 small French bread or boule, cut into 1-inch cubes (6 cups)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 large ripe tomatoes, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 hothouse cucumber, unpeeled, seeded, and sliced 1/2 inch thick
2 bell peppers, seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes (I like to use a combination of purple or yellow or orange, to nicely colorize the dish)
1/2 red onion, cut in half and thinly sliced
20 large basil leaves, coarsely chopped
3 tablespoons capers, drained

For the vinaigrette
1 teaspoon finely minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
3 tablespoons champagne vinegar
1/3 cup good olive oil
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1. Heat the oil in a large saute pan. Add the bread and salt; cook over low to medium heat, tossing frequently, for 10 minutes, or until nicely browned. Add more oil as needed.

2. For the vinaigrette, whisk together the ingredients.

3. In a large bowl, mix the tomatoes, cucumber, red pepper, yellow pepper, red onion, basil, and capers. Add the bread cubes and toss with the vinaigrette. Season liberally with salt and pepper.

4. Serve immediately, or allow the salad to sit for about half an hour for the flavors to blend.

Have I made all the chocolate chip cookies that exist yet?

Well, I haven’t. But it feels like it. Here are yet more. More!! They’re all subtly different, sure. If I possessed any of what the kids call “discerning taste,” then I’d be able to tell you the differences. These are good! They’re…good! Eat em. You won’t even regret it? Well I guess maybe you will in the morning when you feel sick to your stomach because, dear god, what have you done. GOD, chocolate chip cookies, stop providing so many perfect metaphors for my sex life!

Other things: I am now one of those people who needs to crack joints for them to work properly. Namely whatever joint is keeping my foot attached to my leg. The ankle-joint?

Also do you know what one of my biggest fears is? You know when you use a public bathroom and you walk into the stall and it smells like an old person has just used it? One of my biggest fears is the day I leave a bathroom stall and some kid walks in and goes, ugh, old person smell.

I’m getting word from our producers that no one is here to hear about old person smell, the dudes I regrettably boned, and my ankle joints. FAIR ENOUGH. The cookies though, they’re grood.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
from Baking From My Home to Yours

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking soda
2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs
12 ouncs bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chips, or 2 cups store-bought chocolate chips or chunks
1 cup finely chopped walnuts or pecans

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchmentor silicone mats.
Whisk together the flour, salt, and baking soda.
Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with the paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter at medium speed for about 1 minute, until smooth. Add the sugars and beat for another 2 minutes or so, until well-blended. Beat in the vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each egg goes in. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients in 3 portions, mixing only until each addition is incorporated. On low speed, or by hand with a ruber spatula, mix in the chocolate and nuts. (The dough can be covered andd refrigerated for up to 3 days, or frozen. If you’d like, rounded tablespoonfuls of dough, ready for baking. Freeze the mounds on a lined baking sheet, then bag them when they’re solid. There’s no need to defrost the ough before baking-just add another minute or two to the baking time.)

Spoon the dough by slightly rounded tablespoonfuls onto the baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between spoonfuls.

Bake the cookies- one sheet at a time and rotating the sheet at the midway point- for 10-12 minutes, or until they are brown at the edges and golden in the center; they may still be a little soft in the middle, and that’s just fine. Pull the sheet from the oven and allow the cookies to rest for 1 minute, then carefully, using a wide metal spatula, transfer them to racks to cool to room temperature.

Repeat with the remainder of the dough, cooling the baking sheets between batches.

Triceratops meat

So, hey! First of all, this post has been written specifically for…

Second, I don’t know how I feel about sugar cookies. On the one hand, they are butter sugar flour and a little bit of lemon zest. I mean, you’re talking to the girl who eats raw pie dough. Like obviously this combination is delicious to me. On the other hand, I don’t have a lot of drive to make them. Unless I completely desperately need to write someone a letter out of cookies. Which sometimes happens, you know.

I mean for that purpose, and for the purpose of having cookies that are shaped like hippopotamuses, squirrels, the united states of america, and triceratopses, this dough is particularly apt. I could’ve decorated these cookies as well, but I got lazy, and also I hate the taste of decoration frosting (aka royal frosting, which is a poor misleading sobriquet YOU SEE THAT CASUAL GRE WORD DROP?). But you know, some people like to get all festive and shit, and somehow we are approaching the holidays, though I swear I looked at the calendar yesterday and it was March. No? What the fuck, time. This shit isn’t funny. Just hold on a second. Ok? Ok? Okay? I’m not ready to be halfway to 28. I am NOT READY FOR THAT, and no amount of delicious triceratops meat is going to make me ready, so just HOLD ON A SECOND.

Oh man, you know when you go through your whole life thinking if you were on Seinfeld you’d be Elaine, and then like one day you kinda wake up and realize…no. Oh, no. No, oh my god. I’m GEORGE.

I’m not saying I had that kind of day, but. Man. Shit. I kinda did.

Roll-out Sugar Cookies

2½ cups (12 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon almond extract
16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup (7 ounces) granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon lemon zest

1. In a medium bowl, mix the flour and baking powder. In a one-cup measuring cup, lightly beat the egg with the extracts.

2. In the bowl of a standing mixer (or in a large bowl with a handheld mixer), beat the butter and salt on medium speed until smooth. With the mixer running, gradually pour in the sugar; add the lemon zest. Beat on medium until fluffy, about 1 minute. With the mixer running, pour in the egg mixture and continue beating until incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the mixer bowl. With the mixer on low, gradually add the flour and mix just until evenly blended.

3. Lightly knead the dough to form a ball, press it into a disk 1-inch thick, and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight.

4. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Adjust a rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 375F. If you’ve chilled the dough overnight, it’ll need to sit at room temperature for half an hour or so to soften slightly. On a very lightly floured sheet of wax paper with a sheet of plastic wrap on top of the dough, roll the dough out to ¼-inch thick. Cut cookies using a floured cookie cutter. Re-roll scraps, always using as little flour as necessary.

5. Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time, for 5-9 minutes, until they no longer look wet on top. The baking time will depend on the size of the cookies you’ve cut. You don’t want the bottoms to be browned, except for maybe just a bit on the edges. Let the cookies rest for a couple minutes on the sheets before transferring them to cooling racks to finish cooling. Decorate as desired.

All of everything good

These muffins are most of everything good. They’re easy, they’re delicious, they’re texturally wonderful, they’re interesting, they’re not UNhealthy, and they probably write nice emails to their friends. Banana, espresso, dark chocolate! It’s the fucking menage-a-trois of the century. Everyone comes out of that one feeling satisfied and included and should we…can we do this again some time?

I woke up at 6:30 and had these cooled and ready to eat by the time I waltzed out to door to go sit in front of a computer all dead-eyed for 8 hours. So simple! My roommate sent me a text message from her bed mid-process saying “am I going crazy or is someone baking something??” Since I was baking them for HER, she was taking the GMAT that afternoon and I wanted to make her a nutritious snack, I played it cool. But one by one they all emerged from their rooms and were like WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO US?? It’s a common theme in this apartment. But this time I maintain it was in the good way. These muffins are not evilly unhealthy. You don’t have to abstain from eating ever again in order to enjoy a few.

So you should make them. Because they’re in my top 3 favorite muffins of all time, and I don’t even like chocolate that much. I mean no one could knock off blueberry, that bitch has the 1-spot secured for life. But man, these guys came pretty close. So like….go make them? Really really! For fuckin realios my sisters (and brothers, possibly, i don’t know, i don’t even know who reads this filth spout).

Do you see why I would never make it as a salesperson? Well, that, and I can’t fake cheery voice for SHIT. Oh my god, I am so bad at it. Sometimes I try and like halfway through I get to a point where I forget what I’m saying (this happened to me today) because I’m concentrating so hard on my tone. I’m not even kidding, this is what it sounded like today:

Me: …and so the…..uhhh………………I’m sorry, I was just………..looking at something…………..important there for a second. I’m sorry, what? Did you say?

Person on phone: I didn’t say anything.

Me: Right, it was me talking. Iiieee……I’m so sorry. I was……..talking about how I think this program would…..benefit……your. Um. Fundraising efforts? I’m sorry, can I call you right back?

Deep breaths, brainiac. Deep breaths.

Banana Espresso Chocolate Chip Muffins
from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking

1-1/2 cups mashed, very ripe bananas (about 4)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup whole milk
1 large egg
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon instant espresso powder
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 12-cup muffin pan with nonstick cooking spray. In a medium bowl, stir together the bananas, sugars, butter, milk, and egg. In another medium bowl, whisk together the flour, instant espresso powder, baking soda and salt. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients into the well and stir just until combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Fill each cup about 3/4 full. Bake in the center of the oven for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the muffin comes out clean. Move the muffin pan to a cooling rack, and let cool  for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, remove the muffins from the pan and let them finish cooling on the cooling rack. Muffins can be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 days.

FIGuring it out

You know what’s the worst thing ever? Every single pun I’ve ever uttered. And a hairy spider!

But this is about figs, not my sense of humor or my arachnophobia. Because, y’all, I feel bad for figs. I think the whole fig newton(/newman, holler paul!) thing is to blame, fig newtons being incredibly nerdy in the face of chocolate chip cookies and ho-ho’s and whatnot. I mean those commercials were correct–it’s not a cookie, mother, it’s a fig newton! Says the kid who probably ALSO knows the difference between a scarf and an ascot, the similarities being that wearing either will get you beat up at school. Because kids are jerks!

Figs are just hard to place in a specific category. They don’t have an impressive list of recipes associated with them (and in fact, 90% of fig recipes involve goat cheese and honey in some sort of limp-leaved salad combination, FYI) and they just don’t come to mind for me all that often.

They’re just WEIRD. Which isn’t to say figs aren’t tasty, but no one really comes home from a hard slog at the office thinking to themselves, “god damn I could really go for a fresh fig right now.” People don’t even seek them out at the grocery store. For the most part it feels like you either have to be searching for them for some sort of specific recipe, or they are aggressively sold to you at some farmer’s market. I think the first pint I ever bought was the result of some incredibly tanned farmer arms that caught my eye. What? I have a thing for men who know how to plow, HIYO!!

The truth is, though, I find figs to be amazingly delicious. Plus their insides are really pretty (seriously, I’m not trying to make a metaphor here about how beauty is on the inside or some shit, because at this point we are all old enough to acknowledge that harboring those sorts of useless aphorisms just results in a painfully naive picture of this planet, which is–surprise!!–inhabited by animals, some of them sentient, who are seeking out the best mates with whom to pass on their genes, which usually doesn’t have too much to do with whether or not they remember to write all their friends Christmas cards or not or if they’re a huge dick when they get mad while driving [though fair warning, future husband: for me that is absolutely a deal-breaker])!! And they DO go so well with honey. And this fig tart is downright delicious. It capped off a small impromptu dinner party at my apartment, during which my roommate KILLED with these absolutely delicious pistachio-and-olive tapenade topped lamb chops! Killed.

So you know the moral of the story is that you should eat more figs and get a roommate that knows her way around a rack of lamb. But for what story is that NOT the moral??

Kadota Fig Tart with Mascarpone Cream
from the Chronicle Kitchen

Pastry Dough
1 1/2 cups/320 g all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup/115 g cold unsalted butter, cut into chunks
3 tbsp ice water

Filling
8 oz/225 g mascarpone cheese
1/3 cup/75 ml sour cream
1 tsp salt
8 Kadota figs, quartered lengthwise
Honey for drizzling

For the pastry: In a food processor, pulse the flour and salt until combined. Add the butter and process until the mixture forms coarse crumbs. Add the ice water, 1 tbsp at a time, until the mixture begins to come together. Transfer the dough to a floured surface and form into a disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or up to 2 days.

To make the tart shell, remove the dough from refrigerator and allow to soften for a few minutes. Roll into an 11-in/28-cm round. Fit the dough into a 9-in/23-cm fluted tart pan/flan tin with a removable bottom, pressing the dough into the sides of the pan. Run the rolling pin over the top of the pan to trim the dough flush with the rim. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or up to 24 hours.

Adjust an oven rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 375°F/190°C/gas 5. Remove the crust from the refrigerator and prick the pastry all over with a fork. Line the crust with parchment/baking paper and fill with pie weights or dried beans. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove the paper and weights and bake 5 to 10 minutes more, or until just golden. Transfer to a wire rack/cake cooler and let cool completely.

For the filling: In a medium bowl, whisk together the mascarpone, sour cream, the 1/3 cup/75 ml honey, and the salt. Using a rubber spatula, spread the mascarpone mixture evenly in the crust. Arrange the figs in concentric circles on top of the mascarpone mixture. Drizzle with additional honey. Remove the sides of the pan and cut the tart into wedges to serve.

Serves 6 to 8

Essjay

I realize I never posted the recipe to the regular ol’ strawberry jam (which was made at the same time as the strawberry-rhubarb jam), which is my bad. I’m totally that mom who loves one of her kids more than the other and insists it isn’t true but hangs Julia’s report cards from the fridge. Ha ha, just kidding. My mom doesn’t love my sister more than me. If history has proven anything, it is that I am totally fucking lovable. Unless we are not talking about familial love, but the kind of love that turns you into the oldest 27 year old on the planet earth whose high school friends just keep getting married and then you’re drunk at the wedding saying things into the microphone like “hey everyone so glad to be here tonight to share these two wonderful people’s happiness you know the divorce rate is 50% jokes! jokes! you know i love you guys y’all are the best but seriously you think this is going to work out cuz i gots news for you about how things work” and then debbie’s dad is leading you out of the tent and saying that everything is going to be ok and that you just need some coffee.

Naw, that never happened to me, but if it did I would blog about it for sure. Anyway, strawberry jam. I just have to say it: not as good as strawberry-rhubarb jam. I also think I added too much sugar. My bags. I’m sorry. I followed a Chez Panisse recipe, sorta? So, you know…where I went astray is probably the ISSUE here, but what I’m telling you is that I have a preference for strawberry+rhubarb, so strawberryMINUSrhubarb is never really going to get my pants off, unless I’m suuuuper drunk.

Have you been noticing the sharp decline from “playfully sarcastic” to “worryingly sardonic” in the tone of my posting? I hope so. If there’s anything I strive to be, it’s that girl that people laugh with but then secretly feel a little bit bad for, because everyone knows a potty-mouthed sarcastic asshole does not a marriageable lady make. Which is to say, your pity: I welcome it. Shower me, friends.

But also? Who has 2 kinds of homemade jam in her fridge, hmm? Really it’s you who is deserving of pity. You’d better rectify that.

Sun-dried Strawberry Jam
from Chez Panisse Fruit

Makes about 4 cups

Ingredients
5 cups strawberries
2 cups sugar
a few drops lemon juice (optional)
Directions

Rinse, dry and hull the strawberries. Slice them in half and then into thin slices.
Toss the slices with the sugar in a medium-size non-reactive pot and let them sit for 15 minutes while their juices are released and the sugar dissolves.
Cook the berries over high heat for 1 minute, skimming off any white foam as it rises. Immediately pour the hot jam into a flat-bottomed dish (or dishes) with a surface area large enough that the jam will spread to a thickness of no more than 1/2-inch in any one spot. Let the jam steam and cool uncovered. If the jam is thinner than you like at this point, let it sit out in a sunny spot to thicken. This can take a few days. Make sure the spot you choose is inaccessible to ants. If you want to put the jam outside, cover it with plastic wrap with a few holes punched in it to allow continued evaporation.
When the jam has reached the desired texture, taste it and adjust the sweetness with lemon juice, if necessary.
Transfer the jam to clean glass jars, seal tightly, and keep refrigerated for up to a month.

Wherein I say how I really feel about Fujis.

Fuck Fuji apples. While we’re being honest, fuck Gala apples too, and Braeburn. Bashing Red Delicious is not even fun anymore. They’re like the Comic Sans of apples. But fuck Jonagold, Pink Lady, and Honeycrisp too. And Golden Delicious!! Fuck Golden Delicious.

All of the apples I just listed are not apples to me. They are some other too-sweet, poorly-textured fruit.

Give me MacIntosh, Jonamac, Cortland, Empire, or give me a fucking pear. I will also accept Winesap and Macoun on occasion.

Now that we know how I feel about apples, we can talk about apple desserts. No, we can’t even. I feel too strongly about them.

Apple cakes are a thing for me. So much so that, faced with my newest book club meeting assignment to “bake your personality as a food item,” I baked an apple cake. My reasoning: it’s not terribly fussy, it’s kinda tart, not the best looking dessert of all time, not the most put-together dessert of all time, not the sexiest dessert of all time, not a high-heels wearing, career-driven dessert….ok, I’ve gone off track, haven’t I? The point is. It’s just an apple cake. It’s like…not anything else. It tries hard to be an apple cake and mostly it succeeds, even if sometimes its therapist gives it quizzical looks.

True to form, while creating this cake, I made a big ol mess and screwed up a bunch. For one, I didn’t check if I had milk before embarking on this adventure (i didn’t). Luckily(?) I had some cream that was like waay past its due date and so the cream had essentially turned into butter, leaving some milky liquid on top of it. You’re reading this saying to yourself, please tell me she didn’t use the expired-cream-milky-top-liquid in this recipe. Please tell me she didn’t do that. You’re especially saying that if you’re one of the people who ate this cake. Wellllll. Listen, kids. I smelled it. I drank some. It tasted like milk. It was fine. Plus everyone knows soured milk makes the best panckes, so what harm could it do? I mixed it with some sour cream and threw it in, and I’m pretty sure it worked just fine, because the cake was god damned delicious. So let’s put away our Judgment faces and take out our Happy To Eat Cake faces, hmmmm?

Also I forgot to peel the wax paper off the bottom before serving, so everyone had to kind of pick it off themselves. ALSO I added the eggs before the other half of the sugar. But you know, no real harm done. It still came out an apple cake, because it’s a pretty flexible recipe. In CHARACTER, that is. Get your minds out of the gutter, readers! Because it has been a while since that apple has been cored IF YOU KNOW WHAT I AM SAYING HERE. And I think you do.

I know. I know, that is so wrong, I’m sorry mom.

Balzano Apple Cake
adapted from The New York Times

Serves 8

1 stick butter, plus more for greasing pan
parchment paper
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean
4 Fuji apples (NOT. I used macs and other randos from the farmer’s mkt)
½ cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon sea salt such as fleur de sel (or 1/2 tsp. kosher salt)
½ cup milk at room temperature
powdered sugar

1. Heat oven to 350ºF. Grease a nine-inch-circle pan with butter. Cut a circle of parchment paper to fit the bottom of the pan and place inside pan. Grease sides of pan and parchment round with butter.

2. Melt butter in small saucepan. Set aside. Beat together eggs and half of sugar in a bowl. Continue to beat while slowly adding remaining sugar until thick — it should form a ribbon when dropped from spoon.

3. Split vanilla bean in half lengthwise. Scrape seeds into the egg-sugar mixture and add pod to melted butter.

4. Peel apples and cut straight down around the core into four big chunks. Discard the core then slice the apple pieces thinly.

5. Remove vanilla pod from butter and discard. Stir butter into sugar-egg mixture. Combine flour, salt and baking powder, then stir into batter alternating with the milk. Stir in apples, coating every piece with batter. Pour batter into pan.

6. Bake for 25 minutes, then rotate the pan. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes more, until cake pulls away from pan and is brown on top. Cool for at least 30 minutes, then cut into wedges sprinkling each with powdered sugar if desired.

Kat in the kitsch

(updated: though i wish i had thought of this post title, i did not. credit goes to james for being far cleverer than i)

There is an IHOP commercial out that speaks to me. It features 2 enormous motorcycle men steeling themselves to go in and order a “rooty tooty fresh and fruity” or whatever the marketing geniuses at IHOP concocted to describe 2 flat, limpid pancakes smothered in that godawful strawberry goo that they claim originated from fresh fruit, but I would like a paternity test, please. Not that I have anything against IHOP or anything.

But let’s get back to the motorcycle men, because I feel their pain. I hate it when food items have kitschy names. I sometimes don’t order things I really want BECAUSE they are named something ridiculous. Jamba Juice, these words are directed at you. I just want the blueberry yogurt smoothie. I don’t want to have to look the cashier in the eye and say I want an “original bright-eyed and blueberry, please.” I don’t know if you know this about me, Jamba Juice, but I am rarely bright-eyed. Same goes for ordering a “love it” size at Coldstone. God help me, I just want to say medium. Why are you not letting me just say medium???

So now you can understand my conflicted emotions about whoopie pies. I absolutely love these pumpkin whoopie pies, but I hate having to tell people what they are. Hey, what did you make? Well it’s 2 cakey pumpkin-flavored cookies sandwiching a whipped cream cheesy filling. I would rather say that than say “Pumpkin Whoopie Pies.” And then get that FACE like, what in the durn heck is a whoopie pie??? And then I have to explain it all anyway in addition to having to utter the word “whoopie,” which makes me feel like someone’s sweet Christian mother trying to talk playfully about sex. As in, And Then Your Father And I Went To His Bedroom To Talk About The Bible And His Parents Thought We Were Making Whoopie! Ah, god! Mom! Stop!!

Side note: my mother would never say anything like that, ever. God bless her for that, really.

All this talk is detracting from the fact that these whoopie pies are SO SO INCREDIBLY GOOD. So go make. Some Whoopie.                        Pies. Sound of my soul dying.

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies
from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking

Makes 12 whoopie pies

FOR THE PUMPKIN WHOOPIE COOKIES
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon ground cloves
2 cups firmly packed dark-brown sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
3 cups pumpkin puree, chilled
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

FOR THE CREAM-CHEESE FILLING
3 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Directions

Make the cookies: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat; set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves; set aside. In another large bowl, whisk together brown sugar and oil until well combined. Add pumpkin puree and whisk until combined. Add eggs and vanilla and whisk until well combined. Sprinkle flour mixture over pumpkin mixture and whisk until fully incorporated.
Using a small ice cream scoop with a release mechanism, drop heaping tablespoons of dough onto prepared baking sheets, about 1 inch apart. Transfer to oven and bake until cookies are just starting to crack on top and a toothpick inserted into the center of each cookie comes out clean, about 15 minutes. Let cool completely on pan.
Make the filling: Sift confectioner’ sugar into a medium bowl; set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter until smooth. Add cream cheese and beat until well combined. Add confectioners’ sugar and vanilla, beat just until smooth. (Filling can be made up to a day in advance. Cover and refrigerate; let stand at room temperature to soften before using.)
Assemble the whoopie pies: Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. Transfer filling to a disposable pastry bag and snip the end. When cookies have cooled completely, pipe a large dollop of filling on the flat side of half of the cookies. Sandwich with remaining cookies, pressing down slightly so that the filling spreads to the edge of the cookies. Transfer to prepared baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate cookies at least 30 minutes before serving and up to 3 days.