And so begins the Mayhem!

Last May, we had a wee bit o' the crazy going on. Taneasha was eating nothing but road food as she was being chased across the country by tornadoes, I was posting about ice cream and toads (and dumb fuck june bugs) and neighbours with guns and really, we barely made it out alive.

So, this year, we decided to do it all over again.

Of course the first thing that happens is I get locked out of the website while Taneasha is trapped in a car crossing 5 different state lines in 12 hours. And so, No Post For You! (today? yes, Tuesday? no)

We're pretty sure she's not going to be homeless in the middle of the month, but I'm evicting her from Fridays for a while.

Carrot Cake Cookies with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing

(Yes, that whole thing is the name of the recipe. Yes, I'm a freaking genius to mix white chocolate and cream cheese)

What you need:

• 2-3 carrots (~1 1/2 c once grated)
• 1 c butter
• 1 1/2 csugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 2 1/2 c flour
• 1 tsp baking powder

not shown, but also worth adding

• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1 tbsp orange zest

What you gotta do:

Preheat your oven to 350.

Grate the carrots. If you do this by hand, you are insane and you probably have no skin left on your knuckles.

Since you've already got the food processor dirtied, may as well go all the way. Switch from the grater blade to the regular blade.

Dump in the butter and sugar and let the sharp things do all the work.

I was going to continue the whole recipe in the food processor, thinking I could save dishes that way, but I wasn't convinced that it would be able to hold the whole recipe's worth. Cut this recipe in half and do the whole thing in the food processor. It makes a lot of cookies anyway and you can save a few dishes.

If you're doing the full recipe, dump the sweet carrot butter into a bowl and add the egg, vanilla, and spices (and orange zest).

Mash this all together then start adding flour. I did a cup at a time and mixed well after each one.

This gradual-addition-and-lots-of-mixing method will result in a cookie with a cakier texture.

You should have a stiff, but sticky dough.

And you also should have added the baking powder with the flour... dammit.

I sprinkled about half a teaspoon of baking powder over the dough and mixed it for a couple more minutes. Seemed to work.

There are a couple ways you can make these cookies.

You can just drop spoonfuls of dough onto the cookie sheet and bake them, but they don't spread like most drop cookies. They hold their shape. So you'll probably end up patting the tops down a bit so they aren't so blobby.

You can also chill the dough for about half an hour and then roll it into balls and poke them until they're shaped like eythrocytes. (word of the day, bonus points if you know it, google it if you don't)

Bake them at 350 for about 14-16 minutes. They should be barely browning on the bottom and look dry on top.

This recipe makes 5 dozen cookies! I really recommend cutting it in half. Good luck with the egg.

Now, you could eat these as is. But no one eats carrot cake because they like it. They're all after the icing.

• 1 c cream cheese
• 1 c icing sugar
• 4 oz white chocolate

Cream the cream cheese and icing sugar together.

Melt the chocolate in the microwave on 50% power 30 seconds at a time until you can stir the last of the lumps out of it.

(yes there are only 3 oz in the bowl. I added the fourth after I decided I wanted it)

Pour the melted chocolate into the sugary cream cheese and mix well.

Making the icing is never the hard part. Icing 61 cookies with what I'm pretty sure is the world's stickiest icing is the hard part. It never really sets, and it stays sticky, even after an hour in the fridge.

But they taste damn good.

 Did you know what an erythrocyte was??

pies are square

So, I wanted to try that shortbread crust again, but I didn't have any pears. I did manage to find my 1/3 c dry measure though. It was in the container of oatmeal mix. Nice to find, but I didn't need it, since I'm tripling the recipe for the crust this time.

I've been trying to come up with cookies that are like other desserts, along the lines of the epic creamsicle cookies, and the extremely labour intensive black forest cookies. A new acquaintance suggested "raspberry tarts."

The pear tart had a bit of an issue with moisture, so I need to be careful with these. And since I want them to be portable, I'm not going to make them open faced.

I know this is going to pose a bit of a challenge because the shortbread dough is soft. So, I decided to chill it first for a bit. If all else fails, I'll cover the berries in a patchwork peicemeal fashion.

So, if you're ready, I have a counter devoid of dishes that needs to get dirty...

Raspberry Tart Cookies

What you need:

• 1 c butter
• 1 c sugar
• 2 c flour
• 1 c fresh raspberries

What you gotta do:

Make sure your butter is nice and soft.

Cream in the sugar until it's pale and fluffy.

Add the flour 1/2 c at a time mixing until just combined. I cut back the flour a bit this time, since it seemed a little on the dry side when I made the pear tart. **Which was a total mistake, so I've adjusted the amount in the ingredient list above. Use 2c flour. I only used 1 1/2 and it was definitely not enough**

This is going to be a very soft and slightly sticky dough. Since I knew I was going to need to handle it quite a bit in the rolling, I decided to chill it.

Separate the dough in half and wrap two floured discs in floured plastic wrap. You need the flour. It will stick if you don't have it. **you may not need as much flour on the wrap if you use the right amount. may not need to chill it either.**

Chill the dough for at least 10 minutes. Half an hour probably would have worked better, but I was impatient and it was getting late.

Now, I didn't follow the best method initially (welcome to my understatement), so, here's what I should have done.

Preheat the oven to 375 **the 400 that I used for the pear tart is too hot for these mini-pies**.

On a large piece of floured parchment, roll out one of the disks to about 1/4 inch thick.

** I did this on the counter, then realized I had to move it onto parchment. Dangerous, but I managed.** I was aiming for something somewhat rectangular, but it ended a little more rounded.

Put that piece of dough aside.

On another large piece of floured parchment, roll the other disc into a shape and size similar to the first.

One of these is going to be slightly larger than the other: that one is the top.

Flatten the raspberries by tearing them open and lay them on the bottom sheet of crust.

Try not to burst any of the arils as you do this; you want them dry. Too much juice here and the middle won't cook completely.

Once you've got the bottom covered in berries, figure out some way to cover them with the top crust. I lined mine up side by side and really quickly flipped the top onto the bottom. I'm pretty sure I'd never be able to to it again.

Good luck.

Patch the edges and broken peices gently. These will not be visible in the final product. Don't worry about how it looks right now.

With the point of a sharp knife, cut the giant covered tart into 1 inch squares. And I mean 1 inch. They are going to spread.

Gently transfer a dozen of the squares to the cookie sheet. Make sure it's covered in parchment (reuse the piece that the "top" was rolled on).

Bake these at...  400 seemd a little hot, or maybe I should pay more attention and watch the cookies instead of writing a blog post about them? 8 minutes at 375 seemed the best batch.

They're going to spread, but you want to get them out before they get too brown on the edges. And they are buttery.

A little too much so. Definitey need to increase the flour. Well, this is tagged as a "kitchen experiment," right?

They're tasty though, and really do have the flavour of a raspberry tart. Kinda look like them too.

Sorta.

Maybe?

Next time they might.

I hope.

Damn my kitchen is a mess.

I hope you're happy, Denisearoni. ;)