Spiced Carrot Cake and Maple Buttercream Sugar Cookies; A Lesson in Improv Baking

Thanks to the input of our loyal foodie readers, A-Tooch was inundated with baking options after asking for recipes to bake for her ski trip.

There were so many to choose from — I spent a good 30 minutes at (er) work printing out  my favorites. Feeding a team of eight on this ski trip proved to be quite a feat. I started with a batch of my favorite chocolate covered pretzels.  For cookies, I was thinking something warm, autumn/winter, ski house-y…

The Maple Cream Sandwich Cookie recipe from All Day I Dream About Food seemed like an awesome place to start. I adapted the recipe to my usual, go-to sugar cookie recipe. This ended up making about 24 of the mini-sandwich cookies, or 48 regular mini sugar cookies. The buttercream in the middle was delicious and decadent. I upped the original recipe with a bit more maple sizzurp, but it actually could have used 2x more in my opinion. The flavor wasn’t as maple-y as I would have liked. Still delicious. How can you go wrong with sugar, butter and maple syrup in a filling?

What’s next is a lesson in improv. Being that Miss Yunks and I are city dwellers, we unfortunately pay the price in kitchen size. While I daydream of a sprawling kitchen area some day, I have learned to make do with what I got. Behold, the calm before the storm…

I rolled out the sugar cookie dough to discover that I do not own a rolling pin… Quick fix solution? A wine bottle wrapped in wax paper! Not too glamorous, but a good baker’s trick .

Nice, got the dough and new realization – I also do not own any cookie cutters. I’m sure the doctor wouldn’t approve this one, but I used the lid to my Flintstone vitamins (yes, I take Flintstone vitamins). Perfect size!

The result was a batch of perfectly sized sugar cookies, ready for a dollop of that maple buttercream to smoosh them into a sandwich. A crowd pleaser!

Sugar Cookies:
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup butter, softened and cut into pieces
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 cup sugar
1  egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 tsp maple extract

Filling:
5 tbsp butter, room temperature
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
3 tbsp real maple syrup

For the next batch of cookies, I followed a suggestion from our Tweep friend @phatsunny who told us about Cake Mix Cookies. Miss Yunks had made a version of these puppies before, so I thought I’d give it a go. After making one batch of cookies from scratch, I was ready for a little help from Betty Crocker. I picked up a box of the Carrot Cake mix and prepared as directed.

Carrot Cake Cookies:
1 package of mix, minus 3 tbsp (I removed a little less, as my mixture was too moist)
2 eggs
1/3 cup oil

I baked mine for about 9 minutes and despite looking uncooked, they are actually quite moist and delicious once they’ve cooled for a few minutes. I decided to ‘spice it up’ and make these into mini sandwiches, too, with homemade cream cheese frosting.

Frosting:
4 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup confectioners sugar
4 tbsp. butter, softened and cut into pieces

Whip all ingredients together. If you prefer a sweeter whipped frosting, add a tsp. of vanilla extract.

Ready for their road trip!

Normally I am a sucker for funfetti, but the idea of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting was too hard to pass up. Everyone who tried them at the ski house and the office agreed the combination was sweet, a little spicy and decadent.