How new recipes are born

 

 

                

                Finding myself in need of desserts for two events, rather than take down (sigh) my cookbooks (sigh) and leaf through each one (sigh), I googled “Desserts from a cake mix”. I scrolled through the list until I found one for which I had all the ingredients, Pumpkin Spice Cake Mix Cookies.

                One box cake mix, 2 eggs, 1/3 cup vegetable oil, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 2 teaspoons pumpkin spice. What could be easier? Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Saving one teaspoon pumpkin spice for later, I mixed all ingredients with a hand mixer. (Sigh) The dough was extremely thick; so thick I couldn’t get it to release the beaters. So I washed my hands, then manually (hand-ually?) managed to get all the dough from them.

                Then I was supposed to break the dough into balls, roll them in a mix of sugar and the rest of the pumpkin spice. Deciding I had a better idea, and using my strongest Pampered Chef rubber scraper, I coaxed the glob of dough onto the parchment paper. Oh, I forgot to tell you. When I went for the pumpkin spice in the spice cabinet, I found it, yes, but there was only a smidgen left. What to do? I didn’t want to go to the store. Aha! How about apple pie spice? Pulled it down; there was enough, so I added the bit of pumpkin spice to the apple spice—all good.

                Now, how to get the blob of dough into cookie thinness? Powdered sugar to the rescue! And I was able to push it down to the edges of the paper. No cookies, but how about bars? The oven had been ready for quite a while, so I added enough more powdered sugar to cover the dough then sprinkled the spice liberally (forget teaspoons) over the flattened dough and stuck them into the dark, hot shelf.

                Ten minutes was the given time for cookies, but they cooked for 20 minutes before the edges browned. Cut into inch squares with the pizza cutter, layered in a large tin and a large glass plate, they cooled, then went into the fridge. The best things I’ve ever tasted!

                

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