Grown-Up Homemade Hot Fudge Sauce OR “Cloak and Dagger Ding Dong Duty”

I like to tell people how my mother used to hide Ding Dongs around the house when my sister Kelli and I were growing up.  Then, because the real reason she did it isn’t very exciting, I’ll make up more fantastic explanations, such as “My mother had ‘Night Eater’s Syndrome!’ If there weren’t Ding Dongs in every room of the house, she’d swallow the nearest thing she bumped into.  We lost so many cats!”  Or, “She really likes the shiny paper wrapped around Ding Dongs.  She makes fancy jewelry and takes it back to the state hospital after her weekend visits with us.”  I’m convinced these stories are at the top of the list of reasons I’m so popular now, and why I’ve had so many calls from producers at Dr. Phil.

The truth of the matter is that my mother was more or less forced to hide Ding Dongs around the house when we were little because my sister Kelli and I were a couple of ravenous child sugar bandits who could suck down all the sugar Willy Wonka’s Oompa Loompas could churn out in a single shift.  If the two of us had ever found an entire box of Ding Dongs just lying around in the kitchen, we would have immediately whisked it outside to the back of the house and gnawed our way through it with our faces like two raccoons who’d had their hands chewed off by an owl.  Then Kelli would re-fill the empty box with socks or paper towels, close the top and slip it back in the cupboard.  Eventually my mother would discover it, and when she confronted us with the evidence, Kelli would claim consumer fraud and demand my parents call Ralph Nader.

Kelli and I orchestrated a variety of schemes to maximize our daily sugar intake in ways that would leave my parents and our two older siblings completely dumbfounded.  Maple syrup bottles would be drained and re-filled with Black tea when no one was looking.  Seemingly unopened boxes of Lucky Charms would ultimately reveal themselves totally lacking all colored marshmallow bits.  While the rest of my family sat at the breakfast table, eating charm-less bowls of toasted oats and wondering why their pancakes tasted like Christmas trees, Kelli and I would giggle knowingly and high-five, or whatever 1970s kids did to celebrate their superiority… I can’t really remember… Hustle Bumps? Farrah Fawcett Head Flips?

Kelli was the one who discovered that when the Green household was out of Hershey’s Syrup for pouring out over ice cream, powdered Ovaltine could be used as a substitute.  So we would shovel six or seven spoonfuls out of the jar and dump it over the tops of our vanilla scoops, then churn it feverishly for several minutes, taking a minimum of two breaks to switch hands or shake out our wrists.  The resulting concoction resembled used motor oil mixed with cream of mushroom soup, and had a consistency strikingly similar to volcanic ash.  We gobbled it up with the treasured, single, extra long “ice cream” spoon we’d share 60-40 (in Kelli’s favor, of course), then we’d go in search of some baker’s chocolate or bottles of corn syrup we might have missed in the back of the pantry.  And if Kelli ever ran out of ways for us to ferret out new sugar sources around the house, we might switch to melting Barbie heads on the stove or bursting open glass thermometers and sliding the mercury around on paper plates

As for the ongoing troubles she had successfully hiding desserts in our home, my mother ultimately gave up the quest to outsmart her two youngest kids and handed over “Cloak and Dagger Ding Dong Duty” to my dad.  He immediately started slipping the boxes into the bottoms of the dirty clothes hampers in our bedroom, and we never found them again.

Click here for the Recipe for “Grown Up Homemade Hot Fudge Sauce”

Aunt Emily’s Lip Smacking Strawberry Sauce

This is a recipe for my Aunt Emily’s Lip-Smacking Strawberry Sauce.  Aunt Emily is not exactly the warm, inviting face of home and hearth you might imagine on a jar of desset topping, but she is definitely worth a few minutes of your time.  She met my Uncle Raybon on a blind date at a mini-golf and pirate-themed adventure park just before the bicentennial.  They were married six weeks later, the second time for both.  The first piece of furniture they split fifty-fifty was a tiki bar with light up palm trees and wooden, half-pineapple ashtrays.  It was the focal point of their sunken den, and the home base for all their football parties.  Raybon would mix the drinks and Emily would sit on one of the stools, sipping and barking out raunchy jokes with set-ups always involving someone who farted at the worst possible time.

While she was married, Emily worked as a cocktail waitress in a hotel bar.  Her bouffant Brenda Vaccaro hair was almost exactly as wide and exactly as red as the short, ruffled skirt that was her uniform.  In between the hair and the skirt was a crowd of hilly cleavage and a deep, weary tan. Emily liked to twirl in her waitress skirt before she left the house and say, “It’s the preferred look for today’s cocktail gal… Mexican square dancer with super titties.”  Then she would run her fingers in circles around her blouse where her nipples were underneath and stick her tongue out sideways like a rock star, while my mother shouted out her name with reproach and the rest of us fell on the floor.

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Season of the Cookie: Peanut Butter Whoopie Pies – VIDEO

Also known as “gobs,” “bobs” “black-and-whites” and “BFO’S” (Big Fat Oreos), the whoopie pie is the official “state treat” of Maine.  These cakey cookies exploding with buttercream have never had their origins fully explained, though most attribute it to Pennsylvania Dutch country.

My sister Jodi and I recently had an all-day marathon cookie making session that included carrot cake cookies (see them here), chocolate mint sandwich cookies (here), and these peanut butter whoopie pies.  Working side by side, we quickly reverted to the traditional roles we held growing up within the structure of the Green family.  She transformed into the bossy taskmaster who knows better than everyone else, while I became the whiney “mistake child” who resorts to raising his voice and cutting other people off in an effort to have his opinion respected.  If you don’t believe me, check out the VIDEO PROOF below.

The combination of my sister’s and my family-fostered dysfunction and rampant insecurities appears to have worked wonders!  By the end of the day we had something along the lines of 300 cookies cooling on dishes and parchment paper slices all over my home.  And they all turned out pretty spectacular, plus we were still speaking to one another. There was a brief “missing acrylic fingernail” panic, but what kitchen experience is complete without one of those? Continue reading “Season of the Cookie: Peanut Butter Whoopie Pies – VIDEO” »

Season of the Cookie: Chocolate Mint Sandwich Cookies

Thin Mints are now relics of your past. THIS is the cookie recipe girl scouts will kill to keep out of your hands!

Forget what The Bossa Nova favorite, “Once I Loved” tells you.  I am here to testify that love is in fact not the saddest thing when it goes away.  A plate of these chocolate mint sandwiches disappearing is far far worse.  It’s enough to send me to the bottom of the swimming pool in my apartment courtyard, sucking my thumb and desperately holding on to a lead teddy bear.

Think “chocolate covered mint Oreos” and you’re pretty much on board.

Here is that phenomenal cookie that will keep you up at night, as it quietly calls your name from that easily infiltrated plastic dessert container on your kitchen counter.  You know… the one you have every intention of taking with you to work the next day because you truly mean to share these sinfully rich cookies – gooey on the outside, crispy on the inside, and a rich chocolaty peppermint center – with your co-workers.

But really, is that actually going to happen?  What have your lousy co-workers really done for you?  A sheet cake with your name misspelled for your birthday and a Darth Vader Get Well card when you were sick (“I sense a disturbance in the force!”).

Fuck ‘em.

Share these with nobody.  And I guarantee that at least one of these cookies you end up eating while your pajamas are on.

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Season of the Cookie: Raisin Pecan Oatmeal Cookies

Fall is fast approaching. Those of us here in Hollywood are breaking out the sweaters and leather jackets in anxious preparation for the two weeks of the year it’s actually cool enough to wear them. The scorcher days of August have given way to September cloud cover and occasional showers, which means soon my car will be clean again.

Autumn is definitely my favorite time of the year. I approve of the setting of clocks back and nights getting darker earlier.  It keeps me home more often and gets me into the kitchen more regularly.  The cooler evening weather also ups my cookie-making quotient considerably.  I’ve got a few hundred recipes tucked away thanks to cookbooks, family members, and recipes I’ve been introduced to from my friends from the blogosphere, most especially Smitten Kitchen and Lake Lure Cottage Kitchen.

In fact, it’s from the fantastic Penny at Lake Lure that I discovered these amazing raisin pecan oatmeal cookies.  Sweet and chewy with just the right amount of pecan snap, they’re a can’t-miss receipe, even for new bakers.

So let’s all say goodbye to summer here in the goold old Northern hemisphere.  Toss those drink umbrellas, tiki cups and hurricane glasses into the cellar and break out the electric mixers, ceramic bowls and the extra stash of dental floss.  Cookie season has begun here at Tv Food and Drink.com!

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