Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Mon Valley Cookies

I don't bake very often, mainly because I have trouble following recipes and/or I make my own substitutions and then it doesn't come out right.

But when my family made some delicious cookies recently that they said were healthy and easy to make, I thought I'd give it a try. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients
1 box cake mix (any kind)
1 can pumpkin puree (they said to use a whole can, but it seemed exessive to me so I only used about 2/3 a can; this is the kind of bad judgment that usually gets me in trouble)

Instructions
Mix together.
Drop spoonfuls onto baking sheet and bake.

They made a batch using spice cake mix, and then they put icing on top. They were good! They insisted that you could make it with any flavor cake mix and that it tasted good using vanilla or chocolate.

To test this theory, I bought some butter pecan cake mix--the flavor I thought would taste the oddest with pumpkin. (And who is making butter pecan cake? I've never had it.)

The result: It tasted like, well, I don't know. Not pumpkiny. They smelled like butter pecan more than they tasted like it. I guess they were just sweet. They were decent but not to die for.

When Dave tried them and asked what the hell was in them, I told him. He just looked at me and asked, "Why would you mix pumpkin with cake mix?"

"My family gave me the recipe," I said.

"That makes a lot more sense then," he said. Dave is not a fan of my family's secret family-only recipes, especially Baking Soda Hickies.

If you're daring, give these cookies a try. Just don't use butter pecan cake mix!