GIRLIE OREO MACARONS

Oreo cookies buzzed up in a Blizzard from Dairy Queen are my idea of summer. There's nothing better than sittin' against a log on the beach watching the sun set into English Bay while slowly scraping the slender plastic red spoon across the craggy soft-serve vanilla ice cream studded with brown-black cookie chunks.

Summer is slowly slipping away and the evenings are chillier in Vancouver. Instead of the Blizzard, fall beckons me to create macarons!

Though you won't find pink anywhere in my wardrobe, for some reason I find it a very appealing colour contrast for anything chocolate. Pink and brown are fabulous together and in terms of baked goods, you've seen how well they go over in my Girlie Chocolate Buttermilk Cupcakes! Yummo!

I was aiming for the flavours of an oreo cookie but I wanted something more girlie and more delicate. I think Oreo cookies with a pink filling instead of white would be such a big seller! I know my kid would be dragging me down the local cookie aisle for them.

So, instead of the shortening-laden oreo-cookie filling, I grabbed a huge hunk of white chocolate from my wine fridge. By the way, did I tell you that along with my red wine, I've been storing chocolate in my wine fridge? I've been doing this for years. It's so working out for me! The chocolate never gets a bloom, and it never melts in the summer. My two favourite things in one special little temperature-controlled environment. Unorthodox, yes, but I love it.

The white chocolate buttercream...well, it was so delicious! I totally winged it and just chopped up about 6 oz of some Callebaut white chocolate, melted it and added it to my buttercream in the mixer. The texture of the filling turned out to be like that of oreo cookie filling and the flavour was definitively of white chocolate. And any buttercream tastes better when it's pink! To my trusty tried and true favourite basic macaron recipe, I added a couple of tablespoons of dark cocoa powder to the batter. My macaron shells were topped with organic crushed cocoa nibs. They were a lovely textural contrast and injected another dimension of cocoa flavour to the delicate French cookie. I loved how the pink white chocolate buttercream contrasted with the dark cocoa macaron shells. They were so edible.

There you have it: my Girlie Oreo Macarons

BACK TO SCHOOL TREATS

organic brown rice crispies squares with ground flaxseed

I know...I know. There's a ton of sugar in marshmallows and though Rice Crispies Squares seem pretty benign junk food-wise, they do have that ooey chewy marshmallow sugar-high factor that is oh so true to junk food.

Yes, the treats have cereal, but I personally don't think most of the cereals you find in the supermarket aisles are very healthy breakfast options because of the high sugar content. That being said, of course I feed cereal to my child occasionally. Perhaps once a week or once in two weeks, Bebe sometimes has Cheerioes multigrain cereal or her favourite cereal: Kellogg's Guardian All Bran cereal (primarily for the little heart shapes I think). Though these cereals have the fibre I so want to include in her diet, they also have a fair amount of sugar. Since she doesn't eat cereal everyday though, I don't think it's too much of a problem. In fact, I rarely police Bebe's intake of sugar and don't deprive her of a few jellybeans or M&M's if she wants them. You know I would never say "no" if she asked for cupcakes or dessert! She has pretty good self control and I've never seen her over-indulge in anything sweet. She's so not like mommy ;)

My mommified rice crispies treats have been doctored in as healthy a way as possible without compromising on the much-loved taste of the original recipe we all know. I used organic brown rice cereal, marshmallows, unsalted butter and freshly ground flaxseed in my rendition. Flax is so yucky on its own that I have to hide it somewhere and this is as good a place as any.

If you ate these treats, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the original recipe and the "healthy" one. The flax is not detectable. hm. Probably because of the marshmallow. Well, I tried. Doesn't that count?

So, if you want to feel less guilty about eating rice crispies squares, then by all means take the original recipe and add up to 1/4 cup freshly ground organic flaxseed and replace the regular rice crispies cereal with organic brown rice cereal. I don't think it's necessary to locate healthy marshmallows. I just used my favourite brand from the supermarket, but I suppose if you had the energy you could use homemade chocolate marshmallows as I have in the past. Homemade is always best and you can never go wrong by adding chocolate to stuff.