Oh, and...

These ended up coming out pretty okay too.

For the record, this was what I had left of the Buttermilk Pie Filling put in graham cracker crusts (1 1/3 c graham cracker crumbs, 3 tbsp sugar, 1/3 c melted butter, made as the box of crumbs said so and pressed into cupcake tins instead of a pie plate) and baked for 35 minutes or so. I made enough crust for five of these and still had about 1/3 of the batter left.

Raspberry Buttermilk Tassies

I decided to use the remainder of my buttermilk up in a tassie recipe. Being completely new to the term "tassie," I've gathered that it's a tart-cookie sort of deal. Maybe this would just be a tart. Or torte? I don't know. Regardless, I wanted to make a teeny-tiny buttermilk pie more less with some raspberry in it.

These little darlings are fantastic. The crust is so buttery, the raspberry is raspberry-y, the buttermilk is smooth and creamy. It's all good.

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Tassie Crust from Here

1/2 c butter
3 oz cream cheese
1 c flour

Beat butter and cream cheese until well mixed. Stir in flour until it becomes doughy. Chill for 1 hour. Shape into 24 balls and press into the bottoms and up the sides of a mini-cupcake pan. It was a little thin in some spots, enough so that the filling leaked out of the bottom of one.

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Buttermilk Filling from Bill

1/2 c butter
1 1/3 c sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 c buttermilk
1 tbsp flour
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp vanilla (he used a dash of bourbon instead)

Cream butter and sugar together. Combine remaining ingredients. This makes way more than needed to fill 24. I'd make about a third of this amount next time. Today I poured the rest into graham cracker cupcake shells and baked them up. We'll see how that turns out.

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After pressing dough into each cup, place one raspberry into each. Fill just about full with buttermilk mixture. Bake for about 30 minutes at 325 degrees, until crust is slightly golden and filling looks solid-ish.

Gooey Chocolate Butter Mini-Cupcakes

I was running low on ingredients today, so I made another batch of gooey butter cupcakes. What I discovered was that the first time around I used a severely low amount of butter. However I managed to figure it out, it was wrong yet totally delicious.

This time, I wanted to try a chocolate version. I had high hopes for a supposed-to-be-gooey chocolate cake with a crunchy-ish crust, but that's not really what I got.

These aren't bad by any means, but they aren't great. The biggest problem is that they retains none of the taste or texture of the originals. Instead, it just tastes like a so-so chocolate cake with a kind of crust.

I'm not quite through with this recipe yet. Creating the perfect chocolate gooey cupcake is now on my list of things to do.

To make these, follow this recipe, adding 2 tbsp cocoa powder when mixing in the flour and buttermilk. Put about a teaspoon of the flour/sugar mixture in each liner. Bake for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees. Makes 48 mini-cupcakes.

Attempting a St. Louis Gooey Butter Cupcake

Up until three days ago, I had never heard of a gooey butter cake. It was brought up by Bill, who wondered if one such cake could be turned into cupcakes. After looking it up, I decided that the cakes looked delicious and that there was no reason there couldn't be a cupcake version.

Now, since I've never actually tried an authentic (or any) version of a gooey butter cake, I have no idea if the taste, texture and so on are going to be correct. Also, I'm pretty sure mine are going to fall apart as soon as I unwrap them. There was trouble.

So there's the finished, wrapped product. How did it hold up after unwrapping?

You can see there's a clear division between layers, but all in all it holds together pretty well. As for taste, I would compare it to a fantastically gooey Christmas cookie. So buttery and good. Like I said, I've never taste the real deal, but these are good regardless. I just have to work out a few structural problems and I'm golden. Oh, and I think these would be great as a mini-cupcake. So good.

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Gooey Butter Cake Recipe (adapted from Cooking with Joey's recipe)

2 c flour, separated
1 1/4 c sugar, plus 3 tbsp
1/3 c butter, plus 3/4 c butter (I used a wee bit extra than 1/3)
1/4 c light corn syrup
1 egg
2/3 c buttermilk (he used evaporated milk, but I found out too late that mine was waaay expired)

Mix 1 c flour and 3 tbsp sugar together in mixing bowl. Cut in 1/3 c butter until mixture resembles fine crumbs and starts to cling. Spoon by the heaping tablespoon and pat down into 16 cupcake liners .

For Filling: Beat 1 1/4 c sugar and 3/4 c butter until combined. Beat in egg and corn syrup until just combined. Add flour and buttermilk, alternating between the two and beating in between. Scoop into liners over flour. Bake at 350 degrees for 16-19 until just about firm. Sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired.