Friday, December 16, 2011

Cooking with MC (and sneaky math)

When Ty-Guy and his family were visiting, he rode with our family in the 'burban whenever we were out and about.  One day, the conversation turned to Christmas cookies and Ty-Guy mentioned that he really likes Oreo Truffles.  Well!  Mention Oreo and truffle in the same sentence, and you've got my attention.  Oreo is not just milk's favorite cookie--it's mine as well.  And truffles!  Mmmmm.
AKD, Ty-Guy, Roger, Con-Man, MC
Then and there I decided that I needed to add Oreo Truffles to our family's list of Christmas treats to make.  So I asked Aunt Buckwheat for the recipe, and seriously, folks, these are so easy, but look impressive and taste delicious!  If I ever get invited to another cookie exchange, guess what I'm bringing (you can keep that in mind, if you're doing the inviting).

EASY OREO TRUFFLES

1 pkg. (8 oz.) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, softened
1 pkg. (16.6 oz.) OREO Cookies, finely crushed (about 4-1/4 cups), divided
2 pkg. (8 squares each) BAKER'S Semi-Sweet Chocolate, melted

MIX cream cheese and 3 cups cookie crumbs until well blended.
SHAPE into 48 (1-inch) balls. Dip in melted chocolate; place on waxed paper-covered baking sheet. Sprinkle with remaining cookie crumbs.
REFRIGERATE 1 hour or until firm. Store in tightly covered container in refrigerator.

The Oreos had been sitting, in plain view, on top of our fridge, for days. If you ask MC, he'll tell you it had to have been several weeks. He. wanted. those. oreos. And made sure to tell me that at least 10 times a day. I kept saying, no, we need them for the truffles, to which MC would respond that I needed to hurry up and make them. Now. Or yesterday--that would be even better.
So, of course, I asked MC to help me make them the other day when we had a free evening. Finally.

But we weren't just making truffles. Oh, no. We were learning about multiplication, too.

As you can see from the recipe, we needed to mix 3 cups of oreo crumbs with the cream cheese. But remember, we wanted to be able to eat some of the oreos, so we didn't want to just go around willy-nilly, crushing all of the oreos if we didn't have to. So first, we counted out 10 oreos, placed them in the food processor, and let it do its thing. We poured the crumbs into a measuring cup and discovered that 10 oreos produces about 1 c. of crumbs (thank goodness it worked out so well--it would have been more difficult to do the math if it had been, say, 7/8 of a cup or something).

So I asked MC, if 10 oreos yields 1 cup of crumbs and we want 3 1/2 cups of crumbs (I didn't have the recipe in front of me, so I guessed--turns out I guessed wrong, which is sad, because that means we didn't have as many oreos left over), how many more oreos do we need?


It's a story problem, people! Or a number story, as they're calling it these days. Mrs. W would be so proud.  MC correctly calculated that we needed to crush 25 more cookies. So I asked him to count out 25 cookies and put them in the food processor. He laid them out on the counter in rows of 5 to easily keep count of how many he had. As he was placing and counting, MC said, "it's an array, mom! I'm making an array!"  And he thought he was just making truffles.
Sweet!  And I'm not just talking about the truffles...

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