I'm Getting Called Out...

So today my journalism students, some of my few readers (yay!), called me out about not posting for awhile. I told them it's not that I'm not baking/cooking, I'm just lazy/tired by the end of the day. Then I realized, I make them write a blog every week. This just won't do. I've got to get my act together. So here is my newest post, thanks to my students! :)

So a few years ago I tried Paula Dean's Gooey Toffee Butter Bars, and I absolutely fell in love with them. The only problem with them is that if you want to share, say in a classroom setting, they are a little bit messy. Then I found Paula's Chocolate Gooey Butter Cookies and I instantly thought of my students.

How sad is that.

Even when baking I think about my job. But I just can't help myself when I saw how ridiculously easy making these cookies were (you think about these things when you are exhausted most of the time because the children take it out of you). Especially when I had already promised one of my classes cookies if every single student turned in their paper on time (I assign at least a one page paper every week. I know. I'm a hard-ass. But you should see how much they have grown as writers in just 12 weeks!

Anyway, I was positive that they were not going to do it (because they never have), so I decided to be incredibly mean and show them just what they were missing when inevitably 4-5 students turned in their papers late and then I would send them to the law school. You want to know what? Those little buggers actually did it! I was so proud. The law school was so sad.

Here's what my children won.

Ingredients

1 block of cream cheese, room temperature
1 stick of butter, room temperature
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1 box of moist chocolate cake mix
confectioner's sugar

Method

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Beat all the ingredients together (except for the sugar). It works best if you go cream cheese, butter, egg, vanilla, and cake mix. Trust me. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. Trust me. Roll into tablespoon sized balls (I bought a special scoop to make this process easier. It's like the ice cream scoop but smaller). Roll the cookie balls in the sugar and bake for around 12 minutes. That's it! Pretty easy, huh? And the kids loved it. They really do taste like cake, but in portable portions. Enjoy!

(p.s. Did you check out the photo work? Not too shabby!)