These wedding cake white cake mix cookies are sweet, buttery, and almond-flavored. They taste just like the cakes at Federal Bake Shop, my favorite bakery!
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Nothing Stays the Same
In these fast-paced times of technology and social media, it’s rare for things to stay the same for long. Our attention spans are so short. We’re constantly seeking something new, something different, something better. Right or wrong, it’s just the way that our society is these days. It’s the reason that websites must update their look every few months and stores and restaurants seem to be in a constant state of remodeling. It’s rare to walk in to an establishment that looks the same as it did two years ago, much less ten years ago…or twenty. Even rarer is to find a spot that still features essentially the same menu that they did a generation ago.
Federal Bake Shop
Federal Bake Shop in Hixson, Tennessee is one of those rare places, though. Now, when I was a kid – like, a non-driver – it was located in Northgate Mall, so that’s where my earliest memories come from. However, when I got a little older, it moved to its current Hixson Pike location. I can honestly say, though, that besides the location, little has changed there in my nearly forty years (shhhhh….I still have a couple of years to go).
My Favorite Bakery
Once I attained my driver’s license, my best friend, Angie, and I began our constant visits to Federal Bake Shop, or “The Fed”, as we called it. Eventually all of our friends adopted that moniker for the shop too. Their white, almond-flavored cakes were absolutely the best, so we would each order two of the 50 cent cupcakes with white icing from the case and round out our order with a gigantic chocolate chip cookie to cut the sweetness of the icing. I feel certain that after we ate our sweets we probably met up with our friends at the McDonald’s down the road and ate quarter-pounders then went home and lamented our weight (oh, teenage self…).
Cupcakes = Love
Not much has changed, at least as far as Federal Bake Shop is concerned. It still looks the same on the inside, with the bakers and decorators clad in their white uniforms and hairnets. The smell of almond extract oozes from the walls and boxes of thumbprint cookies topped with colorful jolts of that rich icing call to you from tables when you walk in the door. You can, of course, purchase a whole cake (on which they will scrawl the message of your choice in icing) or even a slice. They sell doughnuts, cookies, bundt cakes…lots of assorted confections. My choice will always and forever be the cupcakes, though…that icing on their white cake just cannot be beaten. Forget flowers; when Philip wants to buy me something to show me how much he loves me, he comes home with half a dozen cupcakes (seriously). My sister and I buy each other Federal Bake Shop for our birthdays, two weeks apart. Everyone needs to be on a sugar high throughout their birthday month.
Cake Mix Cookies
Cooking and baking from mixes is not something that I do often. I certainly do not have a problem with boxed mixes; I just find an element of catharsis in starting from scratch, building a cake or pie or cookie from the ground up, so to speak. However, on a recent trip to the grocery store, something made me think of cake mix cookies, which used to be one of my favorites, then I thought about white cake mix cookies. With almond extract stirred in. Topped with white almond-flavored icing. Wedding cake white cake mix cookies. I wanted a cookie that tasted just like Federal Bake Shop’s cakes.
Test Batch
I made one batch of white cake mix cookies as a “test batch” in case they didn’t work. I’ve attempted to make icing that I thought tasted like Federal Bake Shop’s before, unsuccessfully. I’m not sure what happened, but this recipe clicked the first time that I made it. I excitedly texted my sister, who was just as excited as me. Later in the week, I made a double batch of the cookies and divided them up into three plates, taking one to Angie, one to a friend who recently moved away and was driving through on vacation, and keeping the third (we did share with some friends who came over for dinner). Everyone who has eaten them has declared them a victory.
Shared to the The Weekend Potluck on The Country Cook!
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Mary
Yield: 20 cookies
The proportions for the eggs and oil in this recipe came from the blog Somewhat Simple .
10 minPrep Time:
10 minTotal Time:
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Ingredients
- 1 box white cake mix
- 2 eggs
- 1/3 cup vegetable or canola oil
- 1 teaspoon almond extract
- 1 stick butter, room temperature
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- 2 teaspoons almond extract
- 1-2 teaspoons milk
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Using an electric mixer or a wooden spoon, mix together the cake mix, eggs, oil, and almond extract until a dough-like consistency forms and no clumps of cake mix remain.
- Scoop the dough onto the prepared baking sheet using a 1 1/2 inch scoop or a tablespoon. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until light golden around the edges, rotating the pans halfway through the baking time. Allow to cool completely.
- When the cookies are cool, make the icing. Beat together the butter, powdered sugar, and almond extract using an electric mixer. Add enough milk to get a spreadable consistency. Ice the cookies. You should have just enough icing for one batch of cookies. After standing for 20-30 minutes, the surface of the icing will have a dry consistency.
