Valentine's Day and Other Disasters

I told my dear boyfriend that he should not get me anything for Valentine's Day this year. But for those of you who know Mike, you can guess what happened. On Thursday I found out that he bought me a "little something".

Since I hadn't planned on buying anything, I sort of blanked on gift ideas and decided that I would make a treasure hunt to lead to a big pile of Twinkies with pink filling--"pinkies" if you will. So I bought a chocolate cake mix and some raspberries and set to work.

The chocolate cakes ended up a little soft, but the real disaster was the filling. I'd softened some butter and started to whip it, but when I went to add the powdered sugar--something I've had bags and bags of for months--I realized I was completely out. It was too late to go to the store, so I decided I'd blend up some granulated sugar. It came out looking like powdered sugar, but the resulting frosting was a little gritty. And when I added the raspberries, the sugar melted and left the frosting feeling sort of greasy. But I pumped it into the "pinkies" and, while not ideal, the resulting cakes were tasty and, when he found the plate full at the end of his hunt, Mike seemed to appreciate them.

But after I was finished filling the cakes, I had a good cup of the stuff left over. What do you do with a cup of frosting that is only okay?

I thought about this for a couple of days. The idea of tossing it was disappointing, it was such a lovely color and it had fancy organic raspberries in it. I couldn't bring myself to frost a cake with it because that seemed like a bit of a waste of cake. But what is frosting? Butter and sugar. That sounds like the start of all sorts of things. I added some flour and an egg and made it into these delicious, chewy, lavender colored cookies that both of us loved.

And the "little something" Mike got me, turned out to be some awesome Psych bobble heads of Shawn and Gus. Sweet!

Raspberry Frosting Cookies

1 cup raspberry frosting (recipe follows)
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bring frosting to room temperature and stir in the egg and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking soda and salt. Place rounded tablespoons on a greased cookie sheet and bake for about 20 minutes. Cool on wire rack and enjoy.

Raspberry Frosting

*I'm not entirely sure this frosting would have turned out if I used powdered sugar, the raspberry may have made the frosting weird either way. So consider yourself warned.

1/2 cup softened butter
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup frozen raspberries, thawed and mashed

Whip the butter (just stir it quickly with a spoon, this is such a small amount it doesn't seem worth pulling out the mixer). Continue stirring and slowly add the sugar and then add the raspberries