Food on Friday: Strawberry cake cookies!

So, since the potato wedges were so easy I felt a little like I'd cheated at a "REAL" food post.  Here's the follow-up of a sneak peek I gave at the finished product a few weeks ago.  I was alerted to this sweet pink recipe by Tiffany and the original recipe is here.


This is one of my "semi-homemade"-type recipes, just FYI.  (I seriously think that show is so underrated, but that's a rant analysis for another day.).

You can use ANY strawberry cake mix.  The first time I used this Duncan Hines one.  I bought a box of the Pillsbury kind this week at Target - we'll see how that one turns out.

Ingredients

The original recipe used only half the box ... HA!  Who does that?  I doubled the recipe and used the entire box of cake mix.  My only regret?  Not using TWO boxes!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Combine all the ingredients BUT the cake mix.  And then add the cake mix last to make the cookie batter.

It looks orange - but it was def more pink!

I don't remember if I was patient enough to chill this prior to baking ... let's assume that I didn't, but I definitely will/should next time.  I think I dropped these by the rounded tablespoon-ful - and spread them quite far apart b/c they apparently spread.

See how much they spread out?

A delightful cookie sandwich!

I wanted to make pink frosting to match the pink cookie but my sister suggested yellow would be pretty as well.  And it was!  Doesn't this just LOOK like spring in my mouth???  I might make a few different colored batches of pastel frosting and do these for Easter as well!

How adorable/appropriate is the butterfly napkin?

I realized that although I'd linked to the perfect frosting recipe, I'd never shown the process here.

Here's the flour and the milk just as it's starting to simmer.

Starting to thicken up (I probably should've taken it off the heat at this point - it really does just SET in a second).

Stirring and too busy photogging

Yikes!  Waited a few seconds too long... (no worries - the frosting might not whip up as fluffy or big as it's supposed to, but it still makes this lovely rich frosting that tastes delightful).

Mixed it with the butter/sugar mixture and added a few yellow food coloring drops and voilà!!!

If you DO make cookie sandwiches and happen to store them in a Tupperware (like I did), the moisture from the frosting soaks into the cookies and makes them EVEN softer.  They literally fall apart in your hands and you're just covered in strawberry cookie and frosting, which isn't really a bad thing.  My sister REALLY liked the softened sandwiches so I made a few for her but the rest of the time I just took out a cookie and spread the frosting on there like cream cheese (about half an inch thick TEEHEEHEE).