Food Swap, September in Troy

I've wanted to make Thomas Keller's oreo recipe for a long while now, ever since I read the recipe back in 2010 on Tracey's Culinary Adventures blog. Yesterday my friend Jessica and I were at J & A's Prep Kitchen talking about what to make for the From Scratch Club food swap (derryX went there last year). I was like "Bagels? Pasta? Hmmm..." We talked about low fat foods while eating fattening appetizers, and I said I thought about making oreos one day. Her reaction was like "Ohhhh.." and that made me think it was a good idea to just go ahead and make them. High brow/low brow, fancy from scratch junk food - best of all worlds.

First, I chopped up the butter. I got this awesome knife when my coworker went to Alaska as thanks for dogsitting. It is an ulu knife. People in the arctic in the past used it for everything including cutting hair. It is a really nice knife and perfect for cubing up butter.

Then you combine all the dry ingredients and mix in the butter one small cube at a time. This takes a while, but it will all eventually get a sandy texture.

You wrap that up in two sections, kind of pressing it together and chill it for half an hour. I then rolled out the sections between pieces of parchment paper. This takes a little elbow grease. Then I cut them with a biscuit cutter, although you could really make them any shape you wanted.

 

The filling is essentially a white chocolate ganache, but after I made the first two bags for the food swap I went a little rogue. I beat in cream cheese, vanilla extract and a bit of confectioners sugar (the recipe only calls for white chocolate and heavy cream). I handed them to my husband, and he said "Even better!"

What did I get for my oreos you ask?

Well, a good time was had by all! There were a lot of delicious items!

 That is: Chicken Pho (we are having it for dinner), tzatziki sauce, bread and butter pickles with a little spice to them, corn salsa, maple bacon marshmallows, and jalapeno poppers (here those are cooked).

Hooray, I did well. I wonder if one thing we can learn from this is that it is cool to bring things people can actually just heat up and eat. I wouldn't normally think about making an appetizer people just have to pop in the oven, but I think that is nice for a Sunday evening first course (well played, Jessica!). They were delicious. I really enjoyed sampling the onion jam and fava beans, and I like how people sometimes bring household items like coasters (even though I didn't get any of them). 

I guess I am a little bit running out of ideas of what to make for the food swap, and googling "What to bring to food swap" brings back results I find a little clichéd. Does anyone have future food swap ideas?

I'm glad people liked my oreos!