Waialua Bakery

Waialua Bakery is one of my happy places on this planet. Waialua is a town that’s one more stop over, but this bakery is smack dab in the middle of Haleiwa. I’m not sure what the origin is on the name, and I’ve never asked because I’m just way too busy eating when I’m there to worry about any such details.

Luckily enough, this happy place is a 25 minute drive away from my house, because otherwise Waialua Bakery would have all my money and I would have all of their food. Every morning. For the rest of my life.

If I ever figure out how to make their Passion Pleasure smoothie, I will be set. The smoothie has just the right touch of papaya and some creaminess from frozen yogurt. I get serious cravings for this smoothie, and I like to think I can make a pretty good smoothie myself. There is no other smoothie that can make me drive half an hour and plop down $4 with a smile on my face. Really.

Every time I come here, I get that smoothie, a sandwich, and a cookie. I don’t care if it’s breakfast. That’s what I’m getting.

The sandwiches are packed with lovely veggies and the sprouts runneth over. I always get the home made bread and spread with hummus. The sandwich is a crunchy, moist mess that I inhale as quickly as possible.

Amaya eats more than her fair share of my sandwiches. Even stuffed with all those vegetables, this is a flavor that cannot be denied.

(but I do recommend asking them to leave off the mustard and vinegar. Just in case.)

This has to be followed up with a cookie. Or two. Our favorites are the monster (peanut butter oatmeal with m&m’s) and the Wonder bar which is a cookie addict’s dream: cookie crumbs are combined with chocolate and coconut and more butter and probably something else gooey and gorgeous, all pressed into a bar. It’s hard to describe. It’s a Wonder bar. With good cause. I like to wolf this down before anyone asks me to share.

Amaya got lucky and had two Monster cookies. With ice cream in between. I jealously eyed her dessert while she ate every last bite.

Oh, if it could be summer every day.

Oh, it is. In Hawaii.

Waialua Bakery

Google Maps

66-200 Kamehameha Highway, Haleiwa, HI

On the right corner of the Malama Market parking lot, tucked behind Spaghettini

Open 9am-4pm Monday-Saturday

Good for: breakfast, lunch, snack

Favorite Eats: passion pleasure smoothie, Wonder bar, roasted veggie sandwich

Little Foodie? Baby, toddler, kid, teenager, and adult friendly.

FYI: Some vegan options, easy to take out, beach casual, outdoor seating. Even though it’s called a bakery, there are no doughnuts here. Mostly cookies, fresh breads for sandwiches, and a few breakfast baked goods.

Yelp Review

This is a series of posts about food on the North Shore. Stay tuned.

Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies and Stuffed Peanut Butter Cookies

Oh.

 

No.

 

No, I didn’t.

 

Yes.

 

Yes, I did.

Sorry for ruining your figure forever.

It’s a bit painful and ironic to talk about the next things on a FOOD blog. But I hope that I got your attention for this next part. It was a trap for a good cause.

This is the last week of the Foodbuzz and Yahoo! campaign to support Share Our Strength.  In New Haven, Share Our Strength has organized a food truck to serve meals to children, during the summer, since they can’t go to school to pick up their normally subsidized lunch. I love that they think creatively about this problem.

Click Here to see how you can contribute. This summer there is a dollar of dollar match for your donation.

Yahoo! is partnering with Foodbuzz to contribute $20,000 to Share Our Strength on behalf of the reading and blogging community. Help support this donation by:

1. Making Yahoo! your homepage now.
2. Sharing the campaign with your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.

I have a serious addiction to chocolate chip cookies. If you were to look at my Tastespotting favorites list, I have pages and pages of links saved of chocolate chip cookies. And blondies, which are just cookies in bar form. There’s something very pure about a chocolate chip cookie to me, and those things are butter, sugar, and chocolate. If you said, there’s only one dessert you can eat for the rest of your life, I know what my answer is.

I saw these on Tastespotting by The Kitchen Magpie a couple of weeks ago. I immediately made them. And then I tweaked it a bit. The recipe is great, and works, but I knew I needed some more FAT in the cookies in order to make it a little more moist, and a little more tender. I added 1/2 Cup of shortening (Crisco) to the original recipe which helps the moisture but doesn’t melt the cookies in the same way as butter, since I wanted to keep the shape.

Also, I learned a little. Let the dough sit for about 40 minutes and stir it again to help the flour soak up the butter. That way you can actually work with the dough, instead of it sticking and melting to your hands in one gooey mess.

And I figured, since I’m stuffing these bad boys, why not look for some other things laying around the house?

And then I thought, why not make a PEANUT butter cookie version?

Then I was drunk on the power so I made ice cream sandwiches, with vegan banana ice cream (made from Veganomicon’s recipe).

Yup.

You’re just going to hate me forever now, aren’t you?

I recommend sharing these. As my friend said, when she bit into one of these stuffed cookies: “The fat girl inside me is very happy right now.”

Stuffed Peanut Butter Cookies (adapted from The Kitchen Magpie)

• 2 1/4 Cup flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 Cup butter, softened but still cool
• 1/2 Cup smooth peanut butter (not natural is probably better in this case, for texture. If you like to use natural, it will be a bit more crumbly, but still good.)
• 3/4 Cup packed brown sugar
• 3/4 Cup granulated sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs
• about 20 Oreos, Tim Tams, Reeses PB cups (full size), or other cookie/candy.

1. In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Use a sifter if you are at all worried about lumps, and if you live in Hawaii, you should be.
2. Cream together the butter, peanut butter, and sugars in a stand mixer on medium speed for a few minutes until fluffy.
3. Add the vanilla and eggs, mixing in thoroughly after each egg. Remove the bowl to mix in the final ingredients by hand.
4. Pour in the flour and mix with a wooden spoon or spatula until well incorporated. Let the dough sit for at least 40 minutes. Stir the dough a few more times before working with it.
5. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking pan with parchment paper. Take about 2 Tbsp dough and flatten it, using short pats. Try not to handle the dough for too long or too tightly, or it will quickly start melting which makes it hard to work with. Lay the cookie/candy in the middle of the dough and push the dough up and around the cookie, trying to make it meet. You don’t need nearly as much dough as you think you do, for this recipe.
6. Place about 8 on the cookie sheet, at least 2” apart, and bake for 14 minutes. Let the cookies sit on the pan for 2 minutes before moving with a metal, thin-edged, wide spatula, to a cooling rack.

Bake Sales, Crack Pies, Butter Mochi, and Pretzel M&M Bars

Dear Japan,

I would gladly bake for you,

if that could ease your burden.

Here’s my blogger version of a bake sale. Just for you. And made with love.

I spent all weekend coming up with the recipes for Little Foodie Originals.

Li Hing Mui Mango Butter Mochi bars

(Chewy, with a crust, and dusted lightly with that salty, licorice-y sweet of Li Hing Mui)

and Pretzel and PB M&M chewy, fudgy, cookie bars. Salty and sweet. My favorite. Almost as good as eating cookie dough. There’s a layer of cookie, topped with a layer of fudgy chocolate—not brownie chocolate, but chewy chocolate.

If you donate $5 or more here, I will e-mail you the recipes. I want to just mail the food to you, but by the time it gets to you, off the island… well, who knows how long it will take. Stale bars are no good.

If you donate $40 or more here, I’ll send you a jar of homemade salt, boiled down from water in our very own Hawaiian bay.

If you donate $100 or more here, I’ll send you a piece of Jacob Jackson original pottery, a small serving bowl or cup or whatever comes out of the kiln today. My husband is the hero. He offered this up when I was brainstorming. Just for you.

100% of the proceeds will go to the Red Cross’ relief efforts in Japan.

You don’t need a paypal account, you just need a credit card. Just click the “continue” link on the left lower side under the “Don’t have a pay pay account” heading. (Thank you Rieko, for telling me it was NOT WORKING! What would I do without my readers???)

Bloggers everywhere are gearing up for events to aid Japan.  I wish there was more we could do but until then… My dad told me he wishes he was independently wealthy and could just go over there and help. What would we do? I don’t know. Something to make us feel like we’re not just sitting around waiting. For good news.

I am so impressed with the generosity and concern I have seen already with this disaster. It is refreshing.

Also, coming up, The Tomato Tart is going to hold an on-line auction bake-sale. I’m offering a Crack Pie. The Momofuku variety. Sent directly to your house, and I guarantee it won’t be stale.

Why do you need this pie?

Oh, friend, you need this pie. I know, it’s not pretty, but trust me.

It may become a unhealthy addiction. I made two this weekend. Guess what I ate for breakfast this week? Breakfast of champions. This has an oatmeal cookie crumble buttery crust, and the sweetest, gooey-est, best reason to eat butter and sugar together filling.

The suggestion is to eat it cold, straight from the pan, with a fork, and with someone you love.

Or maybe you just want it for yourself. The auction starts on the 30th. I’ll remind you when it happens. With all the bloggers involved, I’m sure you’ll find an offering that suits you.

Share Our Strength and Vegan Candy Cane Jojos

You may have been seeing Share Our Strength’s progressive dinner around blogland lately. I was inspired to take up the cause by several posts I saw. In case you’re still unaware about the program, I’ll give you the lowdown.

The No Kid Hungry campaign is a 5-year effort to end childhood hunger in America.

You can donate to No Kid Hungry by clicking HERE.

Michele from What’s Cooking with Kids is one of the organizers of this event, and I’d say she’s doing a great job getting the word out. There have been several events associated with this campaign that aims to reach its goal by 2015. In 2009 they added 4.5 million meals to needy tables.

I often find myself conflicted about the extreme gap between need and available aid. There are a million needs and they are all important. I want to help more than I do or can. I am rich compared to those in need, even if I complain about the price of milk or my tiny apartment or what my government is not doing. I try to remind myself about that, every day. Certainly if I can drop some money on a Christmas present (or ten, really), I can drop some money here. If you can do more, get the word out by posting about it on your blog.

Money, people, is really the least you can do. Easier than any help you can give and most of us can afford it. Hunger is an embarrassment to kids, especially, and even people you know may be suffering. Hunger is stressful and there’s a strong correlation between hunger and success in life. More than one of my high school students has admitted to me, in quiet moments, that providing food is an issue for their family.

For my part I made dessert (of course). I don’t live close to a Trader Joe’s, so I always try to get someone to bring me a box of Candy Cane Jo Jos. That crisp slightly bitter cookie, the crunch of candy cane, the sweet filling. I want them every year.

*bing!* Brilliant idea. Why not make them?

And even better, why not make them vegan?

I personally feel despair in my soul when a vegetarian or vegan comes to my table and I have nothing to offer. I’ve built up a large repertoire of vegan recipes and I make them regularly. Vegan desserts are nothing to be ashamed of. They are divine and indulgent. I love them as much as any dessert (you know, I love dessert). I wasn’t surprised at all when a girl recently won the Cupcake Wars with her vegan cupcakes.

I always have this conversation with people who are not vegan: “They don’t even taste vegan!”

But they don’t. And really, I shouldn’t even tell them. Why does it matter? Good is good. Even Jake liked ‘em and said, “These are vegan?” He NEVER says that when I make vegan anything.

I wanted to make these for Da’s Kitchen Corners Cookoff too. That’s where I got my inspiration to make these. Check out the other great holiday cookies there.

I also found two awesome recipes for homemade oreos that are gluten free vegan, and not vegan.

Vegan Candy Cane Jo Jos (adapted from Cook’s Illustrated)

make sure your candy canes are crisp. If you live in a tropical area like me, buy the candy canes from the store and immediately crush them up. Otherwise you get candy cane gluey chunks, which make the whole thing taste like toothpaste. I had to make two batches to get it right.

• 2 Cups flour
• 1/4 Cup dutch processed baking cocoa
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 16 tbsp earth balance vegan butter
• 3/4 Cup sugar
• 1/2 Cup powdered sugar
• 3 Tbsp silken soft tofu, mashed finely
• 3 oz dark chocolate vegan chocolate, melted and cooled
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Whisk together the flour, cocoa, and salt in a bowl.
2. Beat the butter and sugars at medium speed until light and fluffy, 2 minutes, and scrape the sides of the bowl occasionally. Add the tofu, melted chocolate, and vanilla and beat until incorporated. Scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula. Add the dry ingredients and mix until it comes together and is a uniform color, maybe 1 minute.

3. The dough will be very soft. Put down plastic wrap and with half the dough, make a log with about 1 1/2” diameter. (or as big as you wish your cookies to be.) Wrap in the plastic and put in the refrigerator for a couple of hours before baking. I put mine in the freezer for about 20 minutes and it was fine. Repeat with remaining dough. This can be frozen for later use as well. I only used 1 log to make my cookies (about 16 sandwich cookies.)

4. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Cut the dough round into 1/8” slices and place on a parchment lined baking sheet. When you’re slicing, keep rotating the round to keep the cookies round on all sides (I forgot. Therefore, ugly cookies. But still tasty!) Bake for 12-15 minutes. They’re done when they look dry and they will seem slightly soft when you take them out of the oven, but will crisp up when you leave them out to cool.

Vegan Oreo Cookie Frosting

(makes about half a batch of sandwich cookies or 1 1/2 Cups)

• 2 Tbsp Earth Balance Butter
• 4 Tbsp Earth Balance shortening
• 1 Tbsp almond or soy milk
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/2 Cups powdered sugar

Beat the butters together until fluffy. Add the rest of the ingredients and beat for 2-3 minutes or until desired consistency. You may need to add a little milk or powdered sugar depending on the humidity of your area.

Vegan Candy Cane Jo Jo frosting

• 1 1/2 Cups vegan oreo cookie frosting
• 1 candy cane, crushed (I did this in a plastic bag and beat it with my pastry rolling pin)

Combine and put in a pastry bag or plastic ziplock with the corner snipped off. Pipe about 1 tsp into the middle of the cookie (flip it over so the bottom is facing up) and place another cookie on top.

See the other dessert participants for Share Our Strength’s Progressive Dinner. Sure to be YUMMY.

Gourmet

• Little Bo Bakes (read the post)
• Hunter Angler Gardener Cook (read the post)
• TableFare (read the post)
• Cooking On the Side (read the post)

Family Friendly

• Devour The World (read the post)
• Hoosier Homemade (read the post)
• For the Joy of Food (read the post)
• Daydreamer Desserts (read the post)
• The Food Junkie (read the post)

Vegetarian

• Deliciously Organic (read the post)
• Jeanette's Healthy Living (read the post)

Gluten Free

• Tartelette (read the post)
• Cook It Allergy Free (read the post)
• Gluten Free Girl
• The Blog (read the post)

S’mores

  We recently went camping. Did you know, cooking over a campfire is really hard?

I mean, I love love love my dutch oven. But you know what I like even better?

An oven where I can turn a dial and know exactly what temperature it’s at.

I burned the hobo dinners a little. Then I undercooked the breakfast in a paper bag (which, I’m still skeptical about. Doesn’t the bag just catch on fire?) And when we wrapped sticks with cinnamon twist pillsbury dough (from the can), one side was burnt and the inside was raw. Not to mention the dough constantly untwisting and drooping into the fire. Putting them in foil to cook amongst the coals… not much better results. So I’m feeling extremely grateful that we have ovens and that firewood (or even coal) is not a necessity of every meal. I’ve been complaining about my electric stove because I want a gas one so badly, but really. I have a stove. With dials.

Camp food is somewhat glorious because you’re always hungry by the time you want to eat something. And smoke makes a gorgeous seasoning. So you put up with a lot.

The really perfect camp food, though, is s’mores. I’m slightly obsessed with s’mores, and I eat them at least once a week, cooked in the toaster oven. The toaster oven is perfect because the marshmallows are browned, liquid all the way through to the center, and the chocolate actually melts. So even this camp food is better at home. Here’s Amaya showing us her dirty hands after our s’more fest. “Charlie and the Chocolate Hands,” she says. I think it was her first joke.

I enjoy the classic s’more recipe, but I also like to mix things up a bit. Here are some more ideas.

For the diet conscious:

Anna’s Chocolate Mint Thins and 1 marshmallow. I was surprised how much I liked these.

For convenience:

Keebler’s half-dipped graham cracker/cookies with 4 mini marshmallows each (the size of these graham crackers are small, so mini marshmallows work better. It’s nice to not have to deal with little pieces of chocolate when you’re sitting at a campfire in the dark.

For the sweet tooth:

graham crackers, Reese’s peanut butter cup, and marshmallow. These are my favorite.

If you want to make these at home, I just set up my graham crackers, mallows, and chocolate on a toaster sheet pan, and hit 450 on the temp. Toast until the mallows are browned (about 5 minutes).

Kids Cooking

Here’s Mikey:

And Here are Mikey’s Cookies:

There is something so totally empowering and grown up about cooking. You get to decide what to cook, how it turns out, and who gets to eat it.

Mikey had to ask Grandma Pammy for a few tidbits of advice, but basically he made these “mix in a jar” cookies on his own. And I ate plenty of them.

(can you tell that his dad is a photographer and he totally knows how to pose?)

If I could figure out how to do it, I’d love to make a cookbook with recipes that kids could actually make on their own. My daughter’s 3 and she just figured out how the microwave works (except that she puts everything in for like 30 minutes).

What would you put in it? What do your kids cook on their own?

Secret Recipe Rice Krispy Treats

I went shopping on Friday to buy some foods I could eat for the “Eat Like Us for a Day Challenge”. Did you know cocoa rice krispies have soy and gluten ingredients? Did you know that SPAM is top 8 allergen free?

I made some strange discoveries on that day.

Like this: I made Rice Krispy treats and substituted coconut oil for the margarine/butter. Even though margarine is made with vegetable oil there is always whey or other milk products in there. (The exception would be a vegan butter spread like “Good Earth”). Even the one I found that was based on olive oil had soy in it. I didn’t want to pour just straight vegetable oil in, but coconut oil actually sounded tasty.

AND IT WAS!

I was so happy about that. Because I really wanted some treats on Friday, and I didn’t have gluten free cookie mix or even alternative flour on hand.

Everyone liked the addition of coconut oil to the Rice Krispy treats and I think I’m going to make that a permanent change. I just made the perfect food even better. Ha.

Rice Krispy Treats (top 8 allergen free)

• 1 bag marshmallows
• 6 C rice krispies
• 2 T coconut oil plus a little more for the pan

1. Prepare a 9x12” glass pan with a tsp of coconut oil, rubbing the bottom and the sides.
2. Pour the marshmallows in a large microwave-safe bowl and nuke it at 100% power in the microwave for 2 minutes.
3. Pour in the rice krispies and 2 T coconut oil and stir stir stir until they’re combined.
4. Spread the mixture into the pan, cover, and chill. Cut into squares.

Cookie Genius

Sometimes I just want to make something that only requires me to follow a recipe, and everyone will think I’m a genius when I do.

Do yourself a favor. Follow this recipe. Exactly. And everyone will praise your genius. When you take these out of the oven, you will be saying to yourself, “This is the best idea ever. I am amazing and I make amazing cookies.” Every bite you take you’ll be saying, “Oh my gosh. I can’t believe how awesome I am.” And then hide the cookies, because you will try to eat them all. Believe me.

The girl actually woke up pleased, for once, because I could put a beautiful cookie in her mouth before she started her post-nap syndrome.

Chewy, crispy-edged, melty chocolate, perfect cookies.
Pretty soon you’ll forget that you ever made any mistakes in your life at all.

Tips:

• Yes, it matters if you use bread flour and cake flour. Special trip to the store. Whatever. DO IT.
• Make the cookie dough balls bigger than your usual ones. They need to be a little bigger.
• Don’t eat all the dough before at least 24 hours is up. 36 hours is optimum, but 27 came out just fine.
• Use cool, unsalted butter. Not rock hard, but not very close to melty, either.
• Do NOT use a silpat. The bottoms won’t be crisp enough. I am completely against silpats for cookie baking anyway.