So this past weekend, my friends and I stole away to Pennsylvania to be all rustic-like at my friend Matt’s family cabin.  No cable, no Internet, no microwave, no mix-master.  (Okay, so it wasn’t that rustic; we did have a TV, complete with a DVD player on which we watched Rocky IV and a Nintendo 64 on which we played Mario Party 2.  But no Internet, I swear.)  Anyway, we stayed cooped up inside while the weather raged outdoors, and proceeded to spend the evening cooking and eating.  Thus, what better night to give these Red Velvet Gooey Butter Cookies (from Peace of Cake) a try?

My friend Sue enjoys a delectable cookie.  Note the N64 controllers in the background.

The recipe was a complete success!  With only a handful of ingredients—red velvet cake mix, cream cheese, butter, an egg, and vanilla, plus powdered sugar for rolling/sprinkling (find the full recipe here)—it was super easy to whip together quickly; there was Mario Party-ing to get to, after all.  Plus, the cabin was at a lack for optimal baking supplies (i.e. no cookie sheets or mixer) which means I was forced to mix the old-fashioned way: by hand.  Literally.  However, the cookies still came out amazingly, leading me to believe this is both the easiest and best recipe…possibly ever?!

Did I mix the cookies by hand?  Or am I pretending to be Dexter?

And also, because we are decadent beyond belief, we also indulged in a simple chocolate fondue.  (Simple because it consisted of only chocolate and heavy whipping cream; roughly 1 c. of cream for every 8 oz. of chocolate.)

We had the usual dipping ingredients of bananas and marshmallows.  But inevitably, the red velvet cookies met the chocolate fondue; and so, a happy marriage was born.  All in all, a lovely weekend getaway, and the perfect excuse to eat 2x our normal daily caloric intake.