I thought giving up chocolate would curb my bad desserting habits a little bit. On the contrary, instead of pounding a handful of semisweet chocolate chips after dinner, I’ve reverted to other alternatives. Making a batch of peanut butter oatmeal cookie dough to have in the fridge and then just baking two cookies at a time worked for a bit. On Friday, though, I didn’t have anymore so I started eating stale marshmallows. Yum.

Then Aaron brought over this GIGANTIC red velvet cake that has like 30 layers of cake with cream cheese frosting in between each one. Sigh.

However, being the baker that I am, I know that red velvet cake has cocoa powder in it. Kelly looked up the recipe and found that this specific cake has 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder in it. “But cocoa powder isn’t chocolate!” Wrong-o. I held strong.

Then today I was foodgawking and saw a post for “Homemade Nilla Wafers.” Yay! Easy and no chocolate involved. Done and done.

But alas, these taste nothing like the yellow box. I should have known better. I had a request once for homemade Oreos that also turned out to be fraudulent. I’m done trying to replicate Nabisco.

These are essentially just shortbread cookies. But I slapped some vanilla frosting on them and they’re great. Butter on butter. Just my style.

Frosted Shortbread Cookies

a better term, for this recipe

1 stick butter at room temperature

1/4 cup sugar

1/8 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

1 egg yolk

1 cup flour

Combine butter, sugar, and salt. I used my food processor.

Add the vanilla and egg yolk, pulse. Add the flour until the dough starts to gather and form a ball.

Remove from food processor, and roll into a log. Wrap in plastic and let it refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours.

Slice into 1/4 inch rounds, and bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes or until golden around the edges.

You can make your own frosting. I happened to have a can of vanilla on hand. Love ya, Betty Crocker.

I’m sure they’ll be gone by tomorrow. Back to the marshmallows.