Entenmann's Experiment

We had a unique little project going on in the Hamptons this weekend. Nate and Neil's friend Ben is a blogger in L.A. (as in a real blogger, peeps -- his blog gets read by thousands of people who don't know him!). Entemann's sent him a a baking kit and a gift card to try some of the recipes in their new cookbook.

We hit the supermarket on Friday evening to buy our ingredients...

A chapter in the book is called "Almost Homemade." We decided to make the Toffee Coffee Pie...grind up chocolate chip cookies for the crust, mix them with melted butter, and press into a pie plate.

Neil and Nate were dogsitting Molly's brother Oliver this weekend, so we had a kitchen full of canine crumb-seekers...

 The baked crust is sprinkled with toffee bits...

 Spread a pint of softened coffee ice cream on top, add more toffee bits, and freeze until firm.

It was a pretty tasty ending to our dinner of roast chicken, mushroom risotto and salad. (Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of dinner. These are all from Ben's camera.)

Next up was a chocolate and orange bread...

Also in production: cookie truffles. Grind chocolate chip cookies in a food processor and blend with softened cream cheese.

 Roll the cookie and cream cheese mixture into balls, chill and dip into melted chocolate.

While the cookie balls chilled, Ben started on the brownie bite cheesecakes.  We were having friends over for Neil's birthday, so I suggested making miniature cheesecakes instead of one big one. The complimentary muffin tin came in handy.

The cheesecake's crust is made of crumbled brownie bites...we didn't have a rolling pen, so Ben improvised. Unfortunately, the brownies stuck to the makeshift rolling pin...

 Plan B worked better.

 The cream cheese filling went into the blender...

 More brownie bits went into the poured filling.

 And, finally, a treat for Neil's birthday -- lemon meringue pie.

Whew! That's a lot of baking. So, how was it?

The orange chocolate loaf was the clear winner, though the cookie balls were a close second. (Personally, I prefer my friend Kevin's version with Oreos.) I'd put the coffee toffee pie in third place, though the crust was a bit hard. The lemon pie was way too tart for me, but Neil enjoyed it. We all had a bite or two of the cheesecakes and agreed they tasted exactly like what they were. We threw them in the trash.

Not sure I'll be repeating any of the recipes...frankly, if you're going to spend your calories on pre-fab baked goods, why not just enjoy them as they are and save yourself the time and messy cleanup?

Check out Ben's blog for his official report...