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??

Rocky Road Cookies

All right, we're on a cookie spree. And this time, I'm turning ice cream into cookies.

I'm kinda liking this as a theme, and I think maybe next time I'll try a mint chocolate chip. I also thing that the next time I'm at Recipe Guy's place, I need to try making ice cream again. 

Rocky Road Cookies

What you need:

• 1 1/2 cups sliced almonds
  
• 6 tablespoons butter
• 6 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
  
• 4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1 cup mini marshmallows 

What you gotta do:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Spread the mini-marshmallows on a baking sheet and put them in the freezer.

They only take about 10 minutes to freeze. You can do this ahead of time and store the frozen marshmallows in a container in the freezer until you need them... which makes me wonder what else I can do with frozen mini marshmallows.

Spread the sliced almonds on a baking sheet and put them in the oven for about 5 minutes.They should be getting just golden and toasty.

You can do this with whole almonds and chop them afterward if you want chunkier bits of nuts.

Put the butter, bittersweet chocolate, and unsweetened chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl and nuke for 45 seconds on half power.

Stir and repeat until you've got a bowl of smooth, melty buttery chocolate.

In a big bowl, beat the sugar and eggs until they're pale and frothy.

Add the vanilla and melted chocolate mixture and beat until shiney.

 

Mix the flour and baking powder together in a small blow. If you used unsalted butter (I didn't) add a scant 1/4 tsp of salt too.

Stir the flour into the shiney chocolate mixture.

Fold in the toasted almonds, frozen marshmallows, and chocolate chips.

This is going to be a pretty soft cookie dough. It's really more of a brownie batter, but I don't recommend trying to bake it in a pan as brownies. The marshmallows can only handle being inthe oven for a little while. If you want to make this into brownies, leave the marshmallows out, and put them on top for the last 5-7 minutes of baking.

You could actually do that with the cookies too if you felt like bothering.

Since this is soft, and we don't want the marshmallows to thaw too quickly, put the bowl in the fridge for 5-10 minutes. It will firm up so that you can scoop it nicely.

Or, you could just drop the dough by the spoonful onto a baking sheet, and put the baking sheet in the freezer for 5-10 minutes. I tried baking a set after just a few minutes in the fridge and the marshmallows couldn't take it. They just turned to goo and left holes in the cookies where they'd one been. The lacey sugary stuff that spewed out of them totally tasted like toasted marshmallows, but that's really not the intent here.

Even after time in the freezer, the marshmallows are going to nearly disintegrate. But they won't do it as fast or as completely.

You know, if you didn't put the marshmallows in the batter, you could chill it until you can handle it, then roll bits of batter around a marshmallow or two. That way, you'd be guaranteed to have no marshmallows on the edges. It's the edge ones that turn into goo and disappear.

I didn't do that this time, and I'm not sure I'd have the patience for it some other time, but you could always give it a shot...

Bake them for 10 minutes and give them a minute to cool on the parchment before tranferring them to a cooling rack.

They are soft and holy freaking chocolatey, and have these fun gooey spots inside them.

I would ask what else has fun gooey spots inside, but we already know the answer to that: "your mom".

So instead, I'm going to ask: "What else can I do with frozen mini marshmallows?"