Salted Caramel Whoopie Pies and Homemade Indian Food

Heather, Jasmine and I like to read all of the same cooking/food blogs-- Serious Eats (www.seriouseats.com), The Pioneer Woman Cooks (www.thepioneerwomancooks.com) and The Girl Who Ate Everything (www.thegirlwhoateeverything). We like to alert each other whenever we see good recipes and fun projects on these blogs, so when Jasmine and I saw a recipe for salted caramel whoopie pies on Serious Eats (http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/02/blogwatch-whoopie-pies-with-salted-caramel-bu.html) we knew it was going to be our next project when I was in San Francisco. Soft chocolate cookies + salted caramel buttercream = heavenly bliss!

The recipe wasn't hard-- make the soft cake-like cookies, then fill with buttercream. Ella was very excited to help us out. When she saw us getting everything ready, the first words out of her mouth here "I want to help"! Ella is already a very adventurous eater, so maybe these projects will spark a lifetime interest in cooking as well.

As you can see, Ella was a very good helper. She carefully helped Jasmine stir the cookie batter and helped me beat the caramel into the buttercream. Ella was always very careful to do exactly what Jasmine and I asked her to do, and followed directions very well. Hmmm... maybe I see an EZ-Bake oven in someone's future?! She loved tasting the buttercream after we were done making it.



Below is a picture of our finished product. We learned a very important lesson-- make sure the cookies are FULLY cooled before filling with buttercream! Otherwise, the butter will melt all over and make a mess, and you will be sad.


And here's Ella enjoying the fruits of her labor-- she looks like a satisfied cook:


Indian food is one of my favorite cuisines. However, my attempts to make it haven't been very successful. It always tastes not quite right, like something is missing. Jasmine also loves Indian food and has been raving about these spice mixes from Sukhi's (www.sukhis.com) that she buys at their farmers market. I was extremely skeptical because I am skeptical about all mixes in general. How can they be any good? They're prepackaged and often cheaply made.

Sukhi's blew away all of my skepticism. We went to the farmer's market and picked up a couple of different packets and made them for dinner my last night in San Francisco. We made a vegetable curry and two types of chicken curry. Wow! It tasted exactly like it came from one of my local Indian restaurants and were extremely easy to make. I liked how I was able to use fresh vegetables and meat to make a fast and healthy dinner.

Jasmine and John brought a bunch of these mixes when they were visiting me in New York. Thanks Jaz and John! Dalmau and I will now be enjoying delicious Indian dinners all Fall and Winter long.