Chocolate chip cookies are fun and all, but once in a while, a Collegiette has to go all out. For your next birthday celebration or get-together, consider impressing your friends or your beau with a decadent dessert. The options are endless, thanks to Pinterest and creativity. Ladies, take a look at these ideas – if they don’t make your mouth water, then re-read them! (Click the titles for the full recipes.)
1. Red Velvet Whoopie Pies
Everyone loves a red velvet cupcake. This recipe combines that dessert favorite with something slightly revolutionary: a whoopie pie! Essentially, it’s a cookie sandwich; two dome-shaped cookies with sweet filling in-between. The whoopie pie is the sugar lover’s dream-come-true.
And crimson red velvet cake itself is beautiful. For red velvet whoopie pies, the contrast of the cake and filling is striking. The red deep combined with the creamy white cream-cheese frosting creates the perfect color scheme.
The recipe, from the Joy of Baking, is a little lengthy, but not terribly complicated. It’s worth it. A homemade batch of these whoopie pies is sure to please.
2. Chocolate Truffles
You could buy a box of Whitman’s chocolates. Or, you could take the road less traveled: whip up your very own chocolate truffles.
It sounds difficult, doesn’t it? Believe it or not, this recipe uses only two main ingredients. All you really need is bittersweet chocolate and heavy cream. If you want to make your truffles a little more elaborate, consider finding some treats to coat them with, such as crushed peppermint, cocoa powder, or finely chopped nuts.
To make the chocolates look even more spectacular, you could place them in teeny-tiny cupcake wrappers. Or, give them as a gift: a box of homemade truffles makes a lovely present.
3. Pink Macarons
Perhaps the best confection ever, a macaron is basically made up of two meringue cookies, sealed together by a dollop of buttercream. It’s an ideal dessert, light and airy and oh-so-yummy. There’s nothing quite like biting into a homemade macaron.
What makes these so great, you ask? These macarons are pink! The cookie shells are made with a little cherry pink powdered food coloring, and the buttercream in between uses strawberries in the recipe. The end result is a pretty pink cookie that anyone would enjoy.
Pick one dessert, or make all of them. Sometimes, a Collegiette just really needs her sugar!