Wonton Wrappers: Homemade Recipe, Asian Wonton Salad Toppers and Dessert Wontons

Wonton Wrappers Recipe

Asian Wonton Salad Topper
Dessert Wonton

Special Ingredient: Wonton Wrappers, chosen by Jasmine

So, I actually was an overachiever with this one by a lot! First, I made my own wonton wrappers. This was NOT by choice. I simply could not find them in my grocery store. As I was making them the recipe stated they needed to be rolled out very thinly. I was not looking forward to this prospect, but Jasmine had the bright idea of using a pasta machine. Brilliant!

With my wonton dough I made two recipes. Since the salad topper recipe wouldn't use much of the dough, I decided to also make dessert wontons. Here they are side by side. I used the the linguine side of my pasta machine to cut the salad topper wontons perfectly. The dessert ones are a little wonky.  

Salad topper wontons. 

Dessert wontons finished! They were delicious. The biggest problem was they were SO hot and I wanted to eat them so badly, I may have burned myself several times. But it was worth it! 

And the salad toppers;

Great crunch and fun addition to a salad. In the future, I'll probably just buy them though. 

Agave: refreshing fruit slush bowls

This recipe comes from my good friend Queen Emily. She served this to me once as a dessert while we were visiting her house, and I loved it!

1 pint of strawberries (I think?)
4 medium pink grapefruit
3 bananas
Agave to taste

Slice strawberries and banana into a bowl. Cut peel off grapefruit and section into supremes over the bowl, allowing the juice to collect in the bowl along with the sections. Squeeze the juice out of the leftover pulp into the bowl and discard the pulp. Add agave liberally to taste and toss. Divide into four Tupperware containers and freeze for 1-2 hours, or until mostly frozen. Enjoy!

Homemade Frosted Animal Cookies

Our dad loves frosted animal cookies. The other day I came across a recipe to make jumbo frosted animal cookies. And then my dad told me he had a business trip in a nearby city and asked to visit for the weekend (of course!). I was planning dinners for the weekend and wanted a treat--that's when I realized the stars aligned for me to make homemade frosted animal cookies for my dad.

Homemade Frosted Animal Cookies
(Recipe adapted from Munchkin Munchies)


Ingredients:
2.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
16 oz. buttercream icing (storebought)
red food coloring
rainbow sprinkles

Directions:

Combine flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg.

Using an electric mixer, beat the butter on high speed for 2 minutes. Reduce the speed to medium, and slowly add the sugar. Beat for 2 minutes, stopping periodically to scrape the sides of the bowl. Add egg and vanilla and beat for 1 minute, stopping the mixer once to scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Stop the mixer and add half of the flour mixture. Beat on low speed until most of the flour has been absorbed. Add the remaining flour and beat until all of the flour has been absorbed and the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl, 2 to 3 minutes.

Turn the dough out onto a work surface. Shape dough into a disk shape and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or up to 2 days.

Once your dough is chilled, preheat an oven to 350°F.

Let the dough stand at room temperature for 5 minutes.  Roll out the dough to almost 1/2-inch thick on a lightly floured surface. Cut out shapes with cookie cutters and move them to baking sheets.

Bake the cookies until very light golden brown, about 15 minutes. Transfer the baking sheets to wire racks to cool for about 5 minutes. Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool completely.



Frosting:
Place the buttercream icing in a microwave-safe bowl from 15-30 seconds (until pourable). If it becomes too thin, add some powdered sugar. Divide icing into 2 bowls. Tint half of it pink and keep the other half white. With the cookies on a wire rack, place the rack over a baking sheet (or over wax paper).  Use a spoon to cover each cookie with the icing. Sprinkle with the rainbow sprinkles.



Makes about 16 cookies.

Mini Ice Box Wafer Cakes with Strawberry Whipped Cream

I just helped with a friend's baby shower. We had a lovely blue velvet cake made by the other co-host and I was in charge of another dessert. I chose to make mini ice box cakes because they are easy, cute and delicious! I'd made them once before using chocolate chip cookies and they were very good. This time I found the perfect cookie to use, Marias. They are a Mexican cookie and were next to the Digestives (European cookie). At 50 cents a sleeve, the price was right. Ice box cakes can get rich but these cookies are mild and perfect for the recipe. Any mild cookie would work. I realized why this combo works so well together, it's basically a strawberry shortcake!

Ingredients:

2 cups heavy whipping cream

2/3 cup of sugar plus a teaspoon

Splash of vanilla extract

1/2 cup strawberries, washed and stems removed (you can use fresh or frozen) plus more for garnish

4 packs of wafer cookies (about 160 cookies)

1. Place strawberries and teaspoon of sugar in blender or food processor and process until it makes a thick, seedy liquid. Set aside

2. In a stand mixer, add cream and beat until fluffy. Add sugar and vanilla. Don't overbeat, the cream should be floppy and light. 

3. While with the mixer on, pour in strawberry mixture slowly until completely incorporated. Put whipped cream into a pastry bag or large gallon bag. 

4. Place wafer on a cookie sheet. Squirt about 1 teaspoon of strawberry whipped cream onto wafer and repeat until you have a wafer tower of 4 cookies with a dollop of whipped cream on top. Repeat until you have as many wafer cakes as you desire. 

5. Refrigerate for at least 6 hours but preferably overnight. When ready to serve, top with a sliced strawberry.

Yields: about 40 mini ice box cakes

I think I ate the most. I may have squirted some of the whipped cream in my mouth after I was done too. Don't judge

Recipe adapted from The Kitchn and The Cupcake Project

Sugar-Free Chocolate Silk Pie

We recently made this pie for a friend who has diabetes. 

After I took the picture I did sprinkle a little bit of chocolate shavings on top which had a tiny bit of sugar in it but it was still super low sugar. Here is how I made it!

Ingredients: 

• Sugar-free chocolate pudding
• Milk
• Sugar-free Cool Whip
• Sugar-free graham cracker crust

I followed the directions for the pudding for a pie. I let it set in the bowl for about an hour and I mixed 2/3 of the whipped cream in with the pie filling and put it into the crust. I let it set up for a couple hours and used a cookie scoop to make the dollops on top.

This pie was a little pricey because of the crust but it ended up only being around $7.

Enjoy!

Happy birthday to me: Copycat Gourdough's donuts! (+gluten-free version!)

Last week was my birthday (and my baby's first birthday!). For my birthday, I decided I wanted food. My husband got me some gourmet cheeses, and we made some fake Gourdough's donuts!

If you're not familiar with Gourdough's, brace yourself. These gourmet donut creations from an Austin, TX, food truck are nothing short of amazing. Happily, a group of food bloggers was treated to dozens of Gourdough's to create homemade versions. I started preparations later in the day than I wanted to (and I'd already had pleeeeenty of sugar), so I went for the easy route and narrowed down my choices to two:

 The "Flying Pig"

Candied bacon and maple glaze

Copycat recipe from The Novice Chef

"The Carney"

Cream cheese frosting, caramel apple pie filling, peanuts and caramel syrup

Copycat recipe from Shugary Sweets

To make them even easier, I bought jumbo pop-tube biscuits. I used a small cylinder (about 1" in diameter) to cut out the middles on some of them, and left others whole to deep fry them.

They fry pretty quickly (though the yellow foam they make is kind of disconcerting . . . ). Within a couple minutes, our donuts were ready for assembly! The only other things we really had to make were the maple glaze and the candied bacon.

I have to admit: I've never tried maple/bacon anything. I like both of them, but I've been too scared to try them together. And of course they were amazing! The mix of salty, smoky and sweet—and of course fried dough—was amazing. Plus, these come together so fast, they're dangerous!


Gluten-free version!
We had some gluten-free pie dough in the fridge, so I kneaded and rolled that to make some flat donuts, which I fried (not in the same oil as the other donuts!). Since my husband was also off eggs and dairy, we were sure to use dairy-free frosting and omit the caramel syrup, which contained dairy. The maple glaze could be made with nut milk, too!

How do you celebrate?

Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies--gluten-free, dairy-free & egg-free!

My poor husband has been off gluten, dairy and eggs for six weeks as we try to pin down a mild mystery allergy. This means he doesn't get to enjoy things like bread or butter or ice cream. We've found a few alternatives--dairy-free butter flavoring for popcorn, and coconut milk ice cream (no bread yet, though--everything gluten-free seems to have eggs or dairy :\ ). But one bright spot?

These babies.

I came across this recipe on Pinterest the week my husband was starting his diet. The recipe was already gluten- and dairy-free, so all I had to do was find a replacement for that one pesky egg. The comments on the original post supplied a suggestion: a flax egg.

I had flax seeds and flax seed meal on hand from other baking experiments, and because I make a moisturizing hair gel from flax seeds in the winter. I searched out how to make a flax egg, but as usual, I did my own Wayward thing in the end.  

Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies!
Gluten free, dairy free & egg free

• 1 Tbsp flax seed meal (you can grind flax seed in a clean coffee grinder, or we use Bob's Red Mill Organic)
• 3 Tbsp water
• 1 c peanut butter (I've only tried this with commercial smooth peanut butter)
• 1 c packed brown sugar
• 1/2 Tbsp vanilla extract (you can use twice as much, really, but if you're planning to eat the dough raw, the alcohol leaves a stronger flavor. You might omit it entirely.)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 c dairy-free chocolate chips*

1. Make the flax egg: pour flax seed meal into a small bowl. Add water. Stir until combined.
Now you have three options:

• My flax seed meal package says to let it sit two minutes, but that's probably not going to give you an egg-like result
• I found these instructions telling you to refrigerate the egg for 15 minutes. That didn't give me an egg-like result, and then I read that it could take up to an hour. (The dough was supposed to chill 2 more hours and we wanted cookies NOW.)
• At this point, I fell back on my flax seed gel experience (and a comment on the above post) and made a new flax egg and microwaved it. I cooked it for 30 seconds, stirred well, and cooked for 30 more seconds. Stir it well to cool it off before adding to the recipe. (Room temperature or slightly warmer is okay.)

 Your goal is to make a gel with the flax seed meal about the consistency of egg whites. There will be little bits of flax seed in it, and they're about as noticeable as the bits of wheat in a graham cracker: not very.

2. Once your flax egg is ready, in a medium mixing bowl, combine the peanut butter, brown sugar, flax egg, and vanilla. The original recipe says to mix these until thoroughly combined, five minutes. I've made them three times and it hasn't taken nearly that long (and there's a caution to overmixing: the oils might separate out. Yuck.). If you're using a mixer and you're cooking for someone with an actual gluten allergy, please use caution. You never know if flour (gluten) from previous recipes could be in the mechanism and end up in your dough. I got a new hand mixer for Christmas, and it's been our dedicated gluten-free mixer.

3. Add baking soda and mix.

4. Add chocolate chips and mix until just combined.

5. The original recipe mandates that you must chill the cookies for two hours before shaping into balls and baking, or they will spread. I don't know if it's the flax egg or the altitude, but compare our test cookies:

Chilled (left) and unchilled (right) dough

If anything, they could use a little more spreading!

However, if you want to chill your dough and don't want to wait 2 hours, this is the recipe I tested the chilling dough fast trick on.

Using a silicone baking mat (or parchment paper) on a cookie sheet, bake at 350 F for 8-10 minutes, or until just barely set. Cool on the pan until set. Enjoy!

*We've used two kinds of chocolate chips for these. Ghirardelli Chocolate Semi-Sweet Baking Chips are processed on dairy-shared equipment (but given the mildness of my husband's allergy, and the fact that he works in manufacturing and knows what kind of procedures they must do to clean the equipment, he decided he was okay with that). The other was Enjoy Life Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips, which are free of gluten, dairy, soy, eggs, and half a dozen other things you shouldn't find in chocolate chips anyway. Store brand semi-sweet chips are sometimes dairy-free (or shared equipment) as well.

Snickerdoodle hot chocolate truffle balls

A couple months ago, we were at a restaurant that was giving out free snickerdoodle hot cocoa. I had to make this at home. Somehow, this transformed into making 200 hot chocolate truffle balls for the neighbors . . . without testing the recipe first.

200 truffle balls later, it has proven worthy.

Recipe (for <200!)

• 1 half pint whipping cream
• 1/2 Tbsp butter (optional, but it adds great flavor!)
• 3 Tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp cream of tartar (or to taste)
• 12 oz (2 cups) milk chocolate chips*
• optional: cinnamon sugar for rolling

1. Heat the whipping cream and optional butter in a saucepan over medium heat until butter melts and cream is just barely boiling. Add sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and optional cream of tartar and stir to dissolve and combine.

2. Remove from heat and stir in chocolate chips. Continue stirring until chocolate chips are melted. (It may look a tiiiny bit grainy; that's okay.)

3. Pour into baking dish or bowl. Cover and chill 2 hours or until firm. (You just made ganache! You can skip to the hot chocolate by adding warm milk until you reach your desired consistency. But come on. Let's go big.)

4. The original hot chocolate truffle balls recipe calls for scooping 2 tablespoons of the ganache mixture, shaping them into a ball by hand, and wrapping and chilling them. When I made these as gifts, I found a much easier method: a small cookie dough scoop and mini muffin wrappers. Scoop, plop, stick into gift bags. BAM.

5. Optionally, you may roll the truffles in cinnamon sugar. However, you'll want to do this immediately prior to serving, and the sugar does make them crunchy, so it's really best for looks on a truffle ball that will be made into hot chocolate momentarily.


Keep finished truffles covered in fridge or freezer until serving. Best yet, keep them under lock and key, because you will be sneaking one every chance you get. Or at least I will.

Yield: 20 small or 10 large truffle balls.

To make hot chocolate: heat 6-8 oz milk and drop in one small truffle. (You might add 1 additional tsp of sugar as well.) Stir until truffle ball melts.

*You can use whatever flavor of chocolate chips you like here. A number of the recipes I came across initially used white chocolate chips, but I wanted chocolate in my hot chocolate (shocker). In my gigantor batch, I used about 20% extra dark chocolate chips and the rest semi-sweet, but the next time I make this, I'm definitely opting for milk chocolate chips, which is what I recommend here.

These may or may not have been so good that more than one of the friends I shared them with commanded me never to do that again . . . because they ate a dozen. By themselves. Without making them into hot chocolate.

That's a pity.

Red velvet gooey butter cake bars

Last year, I discovered ooey gooey butter cake bars. Um, yes. I knew immediately I wanted to experiment with these babies, and I finally got the chance when I needed to bring a dessert to an activity a few weeks later. After I made them, I realized these red velvet ooey gooey butter cake bars are perfect for Valentine's day!

That's love.

Red Velvet Ooey Gooey Butter Cake Bars
(Wayward Method)

Crust layer:
1 red velvet cake mix
1 stick of butter, melted
1 egg


Filling layer:
8 oz cream cheese
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 lb powdered sugar (~3 3/4 c) (or eyeball half a 2 lb bag....)


Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 9x13 baking dish with parchment paper. Mix the melted butter, cake mix and egg to form a dough. Press

into prepared baking dish.

Beat the cream cheese. Add eggs, vanilla and powdered sugar. Pour over cake layer in pan.

Bake for 45 minutes or until set. The top layer will look crispy crackly, a bit like a brownie's (though it's thicker in practice).

Allow to cool before cutting. (If you don't, the ooey gooey part really will come true, with the filling flowing into the pan. Still tasty ;)

Straight from the oven

The verdict? I actually liked my original, thicker ooey gooey cake bars a little better, but these were still a great treat! (You know it's good when someone asks you for the recipe!)

You can use cookie cutters or a knife and a steady hand to cut them into cute shapes.

Enjoy!

What are your Valentine's baking plans?

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cheesecake Dip

Do we really need an introduction with a headline like that?

As usual, I had an idea, I went hunting for recipes, and I didn't find anything I liked. So I took some inspiration and did my own thing. (Wayward!)

Chocolate chip pumpkin cheesecake dip
1/2 c pumpkin puree
1 (8oz) tub of light cream cheese
1 c powdered sugar
1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
Optional: 8 oz whipped topping (the dip is a little on the runny side; this gives it more body)
1/3 c, give or take, semi-sweet chocolate chips (mini chocolate chips would be fantastic)

Using a mixer or a stand mixer, combine puree, cream cheese, powdered sugar, and spice until smooth. Fold in (optional) whipped topping and chocolate chips. Serve with vanilla wafers, graham crackers or spoons ;) !

How do you like your pumpkin?

Ooey Gooey Butter Cake Bars

For the last couple Novembers, my husband's work does an Iron Man challenge, where employees have six weeks to complete the requirements of an Iron Man triathlon. This is a great time to exercise, eat healthy and lose weight. For him.

Naturally, on November 1, I wake up totally ready to support him by eating all the Halloween candy . . . and baking lots of new treats.

Let me tell you straight up: don't bother hunting for "butter" flavored cake. This doesn't exist. They have other flavors of cake made with butter. After much research, it seemed that French Vanilla was the right flavor of cake. Especially since I had a mix sitting in my pantry.

Paula Deen, Butter Queen, will tell you to use a whole stick of butter in the filling and the crust. I didn't think this was necessary. The first recipe I started with called for an 8x8 pan. The result was really thick--thick enough that a 9x13 makes much more sense. (The recipe also called for "1 butter," so, uh . . . yeah.)

Ooey Gooey Butter Cake Bars
(Wayward Method--combining 3 different recipes)

Crust layer:
1 French Vanilla cake mix
1 stick of butter, melted
1 egg


Filling layer:
8 oz cream cheese
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 lb powdered sugar (~3 3/4 c) (or eyeball half a 2 lb bag....)


Preheat oven to 350. Line 9x13 baking dish with parchment paper. Mix the melted butter, cake mix and egg to form a dough. Press into prepared baking dish.

Beat the cream cheese. Add eggs, vanilla and powdered sugar. Pour over cake layer in pan.

Bake for 45 minutes or until set. The top layer will look crispy crackly, a bit like a brownie's (though it's thicker in practice).

Allow to cool before cutting. (If you don't, the ooey gooey part really will come true, with the filling flowing into the pan. Still tasty ;)

Results?
Aside from the crazy recipe confusion as I was making this, it was super easy and quick to make. Baking seemed to take a long time, probably a function of how thick the recipe made it.

Once it was done and we let it cool just a little, we couldn't resist any longer. This. Was. Amazing. The flavor hit vanilla, butter, and cheesecake notes, with plenty of caramel undertones. Sweet, chewy, with a crackly top layer like a thin meringue. It reminded me a lot of everything I liked about chess or buttermilk pie.

I can't wait to make this again! My husband, on the other hand . . . he'd like me to defer until December.

Variations I've got to try:

• Fruit pie filling (apple, blueberry) between the crust and filling layers
• Thanksgiving-y: add pumpkin pie filling to the cheesecake layer
• Chocolate chips. 'Nuff said.

Have you tried ooey gooey butter cake bars? Is fall baking time for you?

The problem with penuche

I have a problem with penuche, aside from its fairly ridiculous pronunciation (puhn-OO-chee).

You wouldn't think I'd have a problem with the stuff. My favorite type of candies are See's Bordeaux (milk chocolate, please), with have a brown sugar buttercream filling. You'd think brown sugar fudge would be pretty much perfection for me. Jump to recipe.

I mean, it's made with ingredients that I have on hand all the time: milk (or cream), white sugar, brown sugar, butter, vanilla.

You get to play chef with your candy thermometer that broke in the move instant read meat thermometer. Just look at the bubbling goodness!

And then just when it gets sticky (well, to the soft ball stage, 236 - 240 F), you pull it from the heat, throw in butter and vanilla and walk away.

When you get back, you beat it within an inch of its life.

Uh . . .yeah. Once it gets to this amazing phase, side note: that's a bad time to stop stirring and pick up the camera. It's done, but it's solidifying by the second.

No matter, as long as it's warm, you can still press it into the buttered pan:

Oh, did I say there was a problem with penuche? Oh yeah.

 So my problem with penuche is that I ate the whole thing.

Recipe
adapted from Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book, 12th Ed.
Ingredients

• 1 c granulated sugar
• 1 c packed brown sugar
• 2/3 c low fat milk (you can also use cream or half-and-half)
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 tsp vanilla (I used um . . . 1 "spill" vanilla. Whoops! Wayward!)
• 1/2 c chopped pecans, walnuts or cashews (optional)

 1. Line a loaf pan with foil by shaping the foil on the outside of the pan first, then molding it to the interior. Butter the foil.

2. Butter the sides of a 2 quart saucepan. In the saucepan, add the sugars and milk. Cook and stir over medium heat until the mixture boils. Grab your instant read thermometer. Reduce heat, continuing to boil steadily but not hard, stirring frequently, until you reach the soft ball stage (236 - 240 F). You may have to adjust the heat to maintain the boil.

3. Remove from heat but leave the thermometer in. Add butter and vanilla. DO NOT STIR. Let sit until thermometer registers about 115. (Original recipe says 110, but this seemed to be just a little late to come back to the party, IMO.)

4. Remove thermometer. Beat mixture within an inch of its life, first to mix in the melted butter, then to incorporate air. (If using nuts, add them when the mixture begins to thicken.) When the mixture is lighter and loses its gloss, it's ready (original recipe says this takes about 10 minutes; seemed like less for me).

5. Spread penuche into prepared pan. Score. When firm and cooled, lift out of pan using the foil and cut into squares. Store tightly covered for up to 1 week . . . or, like me, eat it within a couple hours.

Makes 32 1"x1" squares.