Week 10 of Quarantine

You know what the hardest part of cooking is?

Coming up with what the heck to make!

Deciding what to cook for dinner, for me, is what usually makes the difference between a home cooked meal and succumbing to just ordering pizza. But in this time of COVID and quarantine, ordering out isn’t as easy as it used to. So, we have all unwittingly become home cooks, even on the days we don’t want to be. And believe me, even for someone like me who spends lots of times making recipes, I have a lot of those days where the last thing I want to do is figure out what to eat for dinner.

So what’s a reluctant home cook to do? My trick for getting over the reluctancy of creating a menu, planning a meal, and then all that comes after, is to make it FUN. And in this family, fun is spelled….

My daughter and I came up with the idea of recreating famous Disney food for dinner and dessert. We wrote down all the things we loved to eat when visiting Disney, and the restaurants we loved to go too. Next, we looked at the menus and Pintrest pictures of the foods we liked, and then researched the recipes or came up with our own if there were no recipes online. Once we had a menu, of course I looked to see which would work in the air fryer or Instant Pot and my first recipe came out better in the Instant Omni than in the oven.

The first recipe that comes out 100% better in the Instant Omni is the infamous Carrot Cake Cookie from the Writer’s Stop that used to be open in MGM (which is now called Disney’s Hollywood Studios). You cant get the original cookie anymore at Disney, but it doesn’t mean you can’t make it at home. And the great thing about it is, it’s so easy.

Instant Air Fryer Disney Carrot Cake Cookie (CopyCat)

recipe by Lana Horruitiner-Perez converted from Rachel Franko from the Disney Food Blog

Cookie:

• 1 box 1 box Betty Crocker Super Moist Carrot Cake mix
• 3/4 cup of Water
• 1/3 cup of Vegetable Oil
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup All Purpose Flour
• 3 Eggs

Filling:

• 8 oz Cream Cheese (room temperature)
• 1 stick, Butter (room temperature)
• 1 cup Powdered Sugar
• 1/2 cup canned Crushed Pineapple
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Equipment:

Baking tray for Omni/Omni Plus

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Add 3 Eggs, 1/3 cup Vegetable Oil, 3/4 cup Water, and contents of 1 box Carrot Cake Mix, to the bowl of a stand mixer. (if you do not have a stand mixer add to a large bowl and use a hand mixer)

Add 1/4 cup AP Flour and mix in with a spatula until fully incorporated. The batter should be like a thick waffle batter. Add a little more Flour and mix in until you get that consistency.

Preheat Instant Omni/Omni Plus Oven to “BAKE” mode at 325°F for 7 mins. Place the rack on the bottom baking level. Press “START”.

Wait until the oven is done preheating before scooping the batter onto the trays.

Using a standard ice cream scoop, scoop batter (not the full scoop, about 3/4 full) and pour directly onto the tray. Place into the oven and allow to “bake” without turning the tray.

Once they are done, open the door to the oven and allow to cool for 3 minutes and then transfer cookies to a cooling rack.

Preheat the oven again (just press the “BAKE” mode and it will automatically set to the previous Time and Temperature.)

Continue to bake the cookies in batches of 2 until they are done. This batch will make about 10 – 14 cookies.

While the cookies are cooling, clean out the mixing bowl and attach again to the stand mixer.

Place 1/2 cup of Crushed Pineapple to a fine mesh strainer, and strain off the liquid.

In the bowl of the stand mixer (or the large bowl and use a hand electric mixer), add the 1/2 cup drained Crushed Pineapple, 8 oz Cream Cheese, 1 stick Butter, 1 cup Powdered Sugar, and 1 tsp Vanilla Extract. Mix on medium speed until well combined and you don;t see any more chunks of Butter and Cream Cheese.

Place the filling into a piping bag with a large star tip (or you can use a freezer gallon Ziploc bag and cut one corner). Place in the fridge until the cookies are completely cooled and you are ready to serve.

When you are ready to assemble the cookies, place on cookie upside down on a plate and pipe a swirl of the filling starting from the outer edge and spiraling in. Place another cookie on top.

If you are not going to eat them right away, you can place the cookies into a ziploc bag and the filling in a tupperware or keep it int he piping bag and assemble when you are ready.

Buen Provecho!