Not for the faint of heart

Hello!

Yesterday I had a pot luck to go to for the Chemistry Graduate Students Society executives. While running around stocking up on baking goods we stopped at a spice shop and I found some sweet loot.

Ginger Beer and pineapple pop. The pineapple pop kind of tastes like those rocket candy's you get on halloween, it was really sweet but oh so tasty. There were two brands of Ginger Beer, the one we picked had a bit of spice and was pretty good. We are trying to find a good source of ginger beer for a drink called Dark and Stormy, which is spiced rum mixed with ginger beer, quite tasty. Brent; I think you have had the Grace brand (the same as my pineapple pop) of ginger beer, what are your thoughts about it?

I also found jilebi, which is some sort of desert I had at New Asian Village a while ago and it is sugary and deep-fried so I decided to pick up a pack. The panner looked pretty interesting too, it is an indian cheese and when I've had it before it was so good. We will see how the pre-packaged kit turns out. These kits were 1.50 each so I don't think you could go wrong.

For the pot luck I made WHOOPEE PIES!!!! These are by no means healthy. These cookies are a cake like consistency with icing sandwiched between two of them.

I got the recipe here and modified it slightly. Instead of all white flour I used half white and half whole wheat. We made chocolate with mint icing and banana with cinnamon spice icing. I also found the batter very thick so I added a bit of water to make it manageable.

I have never had luck with egg based icings so I didn't use that recipe either.

Icing recipe:

-1 cup of lard

-4 cups of icing sugar

-cinnamon or mint

-vanilla extract

Blend lard with dough hook attachment for hand mixer until light and fluffy. Add icing sugar one cup at a time until mixed. Add water until desired consistency (for these you want it to be pretty thick). Add 1.5 tsp of mint extract or 1.5 tbsp of cinnamon depending on desired flavour.

Mix-y the dry ingredients.

Devin helping with the wet ingredients and me pouting about the mess the sticky batter made.

Put cookies on sheet, I also put some in to muffin tins because there was SO MUCH batter, I recommend halving the recipe depending how many you want. We ended up cutting the muffin ones in half a and putting the icing in-between. Bake for 10 minutes on 350 et voila.

For traveling convenience I put the icing into ziplocks and when I arrived at the party I just cut off the corner of the bag and it worked as an icing bag.

The finished product (the next day, my camera died when I got to the party).

Devin enjoying a hangover Whoopee Pie.

I also made a smoothie this morning. It consisted of 1 banana, 1/2 cup frozen pineapple, a splash of juice, and ice until full. Nice and refreshing morning snack.

Tonight is wing night!!! (Finally) My wing topping of choice is going to be sweet chili. What is your favourite wing flavour? What is the craziest/most unique wing flavour you have heard of?