Friday Faves – Healthy and Sane makes Chewy Caramel Chocolate Sandwich Cookies
Hope everyone had a great week. I have another great blogger for you guys to check out as part of my Friday Favs. This week, I introduce you Elina from Healthy and Sane. Elina is another local blogger who I have enjoyed seeing out and about at blogging events. Elina blogs about food, local restaurants, travels, and just her life in general. Elina really puts it all out there for her readers and shares her efforts to find a balance between food, weight loss, and dieting. The brutal honesty is refreshing. Definitely check her out.
Hi Beantown Baker readers! My name is Elina. I’m the writer behind the blogs Healthy and Sane and Russian Bites. I’ve been blogging at Healthy and Sane for nearly 3 years and this is my very first guest post! I’m nervous and excited to be here with you. Hope you’ll enjoy this post and maybe come visit me some time!
When I discovered my love for healthy cooking, I felt like I found a secret to sustainable weight loss. Healthy food can be fun and delicious. I couldn’t believe that people still had stereotypes against it! I started blogging at Healthy and Sane because I wanted to share my experience of losing weight the right way. I was calorie counting at the time and whipping up something new for every meal (I used to blog about every bite that went into my mouth). Everyone I knew in real life were amazed at how I could sustain it but I was having so much fun!!
[Caramel bubbling]
Over the years I realized that losing weight was not just about healthy cooking or calories in and out. I realized that I was an emotional eater and when things got rough, I reached for food. I beat myself up often for “letting go.” I’d start new, more ambitious eating plans, new challenges, new mind games (this one was actually fun but it still didn’t last). Until eventually I couldn’t do this for one more day and I said good bye to dieting for good. I’m now chronicling my journey towards diet free living on Healthy and Sane, among restaurant reviews (Jen’s favorite feature!), random kitchen adventures, and fun events around the Boston area.
[Chewy caramel disks]
My readers say they love my blog because of how honest and relatable I am. So I’m going to share something very honest with you here. I quit dieting but I’m still struggling with emotional eating and bingeing when I’m faced with new challenges or uncomfortable feelings. And I still often give in to those tendencies (yes, I’m a work in progress). But the thing is – I love love love food. I do. And as backwards as this sounds, when I get the bingeing shakes, (as I try to resist it) I find that it helps to look at pretty food. It reminds me of the beauty in food. It reminds me that food is not something to abuse yourself with but to love and enjoy!
[chocolate cookies]
This is how I found the recipe for these chewy caramel chocolate sandwich cookies. I hope you find them as pretty and delicious as I did.
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
I am of two minds on this post. On the one hand, my OCD really kicked in when I read that you had not followed Mark Bittman’s recipe but still decided to write about it. Seemed a bit sloppy for a nerd and an engineer. On the other hand, that is how Pasteur discovered Penicillin. Bittman is such a great cook, that I think he deserves better treatment; so I plan to do him the honor of making his recipe. I am not going to make the other two though!
Oops! Senior moment that – it was the Scottish scientist and Nobel laureate Alexander Fleming in 1928. Apparently, the Pasteur Institut ignored the work of a French physician, Ernest Duchesne, who in 1897 discovered the curative properties of the Penicillium Glaucum, a different mold than the one Fleming discovered, but in the same genus. Gotta love Wikipedia.
There are two tapioca recipes on the Minute Tapioca box. I always use the one for Fluffy Pudding, which calls for 2 cups milk and whipping the egg whites separately from the cooked milk with tapioca and egg yolk. I think you will find the pudding much improved over the basic recipe.
Also, the quality of the vanilla makes a huge difference in something like tapioca. Cooks Illustrated likes McCormick and I found this on amazon and at Sam’s Club in large bottles for very reasonable prices.
One other note: I find that CI has a sweet tooth: their recipes are sometimes too sweet for my taste, though they are a go-to source otherwise.
This is an interesting discussion. I tried the Kraft recipe today. I threw everything (except the vanilla) in the blender before putting it on the stove. I also added 1/2 tsp. salt and a bit more vanilla. I actually thought it was sweet enough already, though. However, I agree with your overall conclusion that it’s a bit boring. Well, at least it was easy. Anyway, next time I may a recipe using large tapioca. 🙂
Thanks for the comparison.