4 Ingredient Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

A few months ago, hubby facebook-shared with me a photo of a stack of chocolate chip cookies accompanied by the simplest cookie recipe I’ve ever seen. I just did a little googling and I think that random unknown original facebook-poster stole the recipe from this blog, which shared it back in January.

Hubby was seriously jonesing for this cookies, and because they were so simple and probably delicious, I was willing to give them a try.

Ingredient #1: Creamy peanut butter

Ingredient #2: Granulated sugar

Ingredient #3: Eggs (forgot to take the picture before they were beaten in, sorry!)

Ingredient #4: Chocolate chips.

I didn’t have enough chocolate chips, so I compensated by adding peanut butter chips, too.

It makes a goopy cookie dough. Do yourself a favor and bake it on parchment paper to avoid making a sticky, baked-on mess.

After baking, just move them to a wire rack, just like any other cookie.

Mmmm, they taste delicious!

Pumpkin Brownies: A Comedy of Errors

It’s actually quite astounding that these brownies turned out edible, much less delicious.

Let me back up. Hubby and I were invited to dinner at my brother’s house. I promised to bring dessert. I was, for some reason, utterly fixated on the fact that I wanted a pumpkin dessert. Wanted one SO BADLY. I did a lot of googling and ended up quite disappointed because I had neither cream cheese nor sufficient eggs for pretty much every recipe that I found. I finally decided to borrow an egg from my downstairs neighbor so that I could make pumpkin brownies.

My neighbor, T, is an older, retired guy who really shouldn’t be retired. He’s bored out of his mind, lonely, and dying to strike up a conversation with anyone who walks by. Since our front doors are right next to each other and we both have dogs, this happens a lot to me (hubby is better at skirting by undetected than I am). T likes to do things like show me pictures of wolves, commenting on how much they look like my dogs (they really don’t) and share all the neighborhood gossip and ask me questions about hubby. T was the one that greeted the guys who delivered our washer and dryer when we first moved in (the delivery guys were a little stunned by the swiftness by which they became best buddies with this guy), and I still laugh about how seeing hubby in his Army ACUs stunned him into utter silence (for a few seconds at least). Most recently, T has offered to pose for a picture in a Santa suit with my dogs. This fact is only slightly less weird when you know that he’s Santa down at the mall. Anyway, T is pretty weird, but he’s harmless and friendly. He was thrilled to give me eggs and refused to take any back when I finally made a Wegman’s run. I really am grateful to finally live somewhere where I feel comfortable enough to actually knock on my neighbor’s doors when I have these last minute baking problems. I didn’t have that in Maryland.

So I started on my pumpkin brownies.

Basically, you make two separate batters, a chocolate one and a pumpkin one, and then swirl them together. Unless you’re an idiot, like me. We’ll get to that.

The batters start off as one. Flour, baking powder and salt here.

In another bowl, sugar, melted butter, and vanilla.

Gradually add the flour mixture

Until you’ve got this. Leave half in this bowl and put the other half in another bowl.

To the first bowl, add cocoa powder and chocolate chips.

It’s very thick! How weird.

To the other half of the batter, add some pumpkin puree

Along with cinnamon, ground cloves, and nutmeg. Also chopped walnuts, but I didn’t have those.

The recipe says to layer them in the pan, half of each mixture at a time. I used a pie plate simply because my square pyrex was dirty and I didn’t feel like cleaning it.

Sure is a weird texture. Wasn’t too sure about this.

Ended up smooshing it down with my fingers.

The pumpkin mixture was easier to spread.

Chocolate again. Again, required finger smooshing.

And the last of the pumpkin.

The recipe said to use a knife to swirl everything together at this point. I had trouble with this, since the chocolate was so firm.

It wasn’t until just after I put the brownies in the oven that my eyes fell on this.

I forgot the eggs! Total dumbass move. No wonder the mixture was so firm and weird!!! I was supposed to mix them into sugar-vanilla-butter mixture, just before adding the flour mixture and splitting the batter.

So I took the batter back out of the oven, beat my eggs, and then poured the eggs into the batter.

That’s better! I just ruined all chances of pretty marbling, but at least the texture looks better.

You’re not going to believe this. About 15 minutes after I put the brownies back in the oven, I realized that I’d only added the 2 eggs that I already had, not the 3rd that I’d had to borrow from my weird neighbor. At this point, it was too late to mix it in, so I decided to leave it alone.

But wait, there’s more! I also, at some point, managed to turn off the oven without realizing it. My brownies took FOREVER to cook, and it turns out that’s because they were just in a warm oven for a long time. I eventually figured it out, but I’m sure the extended warmness had a drying effect.

Finally, they were done and I took them out.

Looks okay…

Truth be told, they were somehow pretty good. I make a million stupid mistakes, but they were still fudgy and yummy. I’d like to make this again without messing up so much, but at least I know that the recipe has potential.

A Better Rice Krispie Treat

Hubby and I are in the midst of some major life changes right now. In the past few weeks, we’ve watched all of our household goods be packed up and taken away, driven across two state lines, unpacked a jumble of clothes and random items at my parents’ house, and then divided our time between job searching, interviews, and trying to do things around the house to make our stay a little less stressful for my parents. And taking our dogs on high-speed laps around the backyard with the help of my parents’ golf cart. They’re bred to run and I don’t think I’ve seen them look quite so happy in a while.

Anyway, after two weeks, we moved our home base 90 miles east to my brother’s house because of job interviews and house searches, and now we’re trying to keep pace with him and his wife as they chase after their adorable baby.

Thus, no blogging for a while. But because we had thrown away our ancient, malfunctioning router just before the move, we’ve purchased one for our new place and have it temporarily set up at my brother’s. Yay wifi! So now I’m back.

While at Mom and Dad’s, I did do a lot of cooking (my self-imposed rent was putting dinner on the table every night). Pretty much everything I made was something I’d already mastered, but I did try one new thing while I was there: Rice Krispie treats.

I’m not talking about the marshmallow-infused ones that you remember from your school cafeteria. I’m talking a peanut-butter chocolate version that is simply better.

It’s worth mentioning that it wasn’t until discussing this treat with my family that I learned the reason that Mom always made these: she doesn’t like marshmallows. I thought I was the only weirdo on the planet that doesn’t like them. I don’t mind them too much if they’re melted, like in s’mores, but solid ones are just icky (luckily, the Easter bunny seemed to know that and rarely brought me Peeps). Turns out, you don’t need marshmallows for Rice Krispie treats if you have something better.

My writing is so disjointed. I suppose my brain is lethargic after a few weeks of not writing anything.

The pictures I’ve taken of the process were taken on my Android phone, since my camera’s battery died and with everything going on, I really had no idea where my spare was (I think I got a few shots with my camera first, but who knows where THAT is at the moment). Luckily Mom was able to finish up with some good shots when we were ready to eat.

First, I combined sugar and light corn syrup in a saucepan and kept it moving just until it boiled. Use your imagination for that part. It never did lose its cloudiness, as I expected it to when the sugar melted, but I guess that’s because of the syrup. Next, I pulled the mixture off the burner and mixed in some creamy peanut butter. It melted quickly and was easy to mix in. Once it was combined, I poured it into a large bowl of Rice Krispies.

Om nom nom. The few pieces of Rice Krispies that escaped to the floor served as a nice surprise treat for the puppy. She sure likes when I make messes.

Once everything’s mixed, smoosh it into a greased pan.

Finally, melt chocolate chips to smear on top. I ended up doubling the amount in Mom’s recipe, as I couldn’t quite stretch the original amount over the whole pan.

And that’s it! I refrigerated it for a while so that it would solidify and stiffen up, but I did remove it from the fridge a few hours before it was served.

Here it is!

In retrospect, I should have tried to pry the whole thing out of the pan so that I could attack it with a big knife on the cutting board, as it was really hard to cut into with a normal knife in the pan. But it turned out okay, as hubby was pretty motivated to try this since he knew it had both chocolate and peanut butter.

The first thing he said after biting into his piece was, “Why haven’t you made this before?”

Good question. I had no answer. I guess it never occurred to me. But seriously, what was I thinking? I must have forgotten how damn good these are.

I’ll have to make some more soon. They really are delicious.

Black-Bottom Cupcakes

This is one of those desserts I make extremely infrequently, yet I still consider it in my inner circle of favorite desserts. Until recently, I can’t remember the last time I made these cupcakes myself, but I do remember each instance in which I got to taste someone else’s rendition over the past few years. Most recently, my little brother made them for our big brothers’ 30th birthday party. I’ve been dreaming of them ever since. I meant to make them for a birthday at work, but I was dumb and mixed up the days. I ended up purchasing a dozen florescent frosted cupcakes from the grocery store at 6am instead. Not cool.

But then hubby and I decided to entertain recently, and it was the perfect opportunity to finally make them.

The best part of these cupcakes, by far, is the cream cheese filling. I sure love cream cheese. Just start off with some cream cheese, an egg, some sugar, and just a hint of salt.

And beat it until it’s creamy.

The recipe calls for 6 ounces of chocolate chips. I just squeeze a 12-ounce bag in half and play it by ear.

And stir them in the cream cheese mixture.

Now for the chocolate batter!

See that? It’s about 3/4 cup of flour. I was so angry at myself for having run out. I thought there was another pound of flour in a bag at the back of my cabinet, but turns out I had 2 pounds of bread flour and 1 pound of whole wheat flour waiting to be opened, but no more all-purpose flour. This is the first time I’ve EVER run out of flour. Grr.

I’d already made 2 trips out that day – once to the grocery store, and once to the beer/ wine store. And it was raining. I really, really, really didn’t want to go out again for another 3/4 cup of flour, so I worked on the nerve to knock on my neighbor’s door (I can’t wait until I live somewhere that I can do that comfortably). No one answered, though. So, cautiously, I filled the rest of that measuring cup with whole wheat flour.

And for the last 1/2 cup of flour, I couldn’t decide which would be worse, whole wheat (grainy) or bread flour (doughy), so I used a mixture of the two.

Also, some more sugar (not pictured because I wasn’t thinking) and unsweetened cocoa powder.

Plus, some salt

And baking soda.

Blend these together, and then add some water, oil (I used vegetable oil), vanilla extract, and vinegar. And if you’re like me, have some dyslexia issues and get the amounts of vanilla and vinegar mixed up because the words look the same. Ah well. At least I did too much vanilla, not too much vinegar. Not a bad thing in the long run.

Spoon the batter into your muffin cups. I was really glad that I sprung for the fancy foil liners, since the batter was pretty runny. I’m used to creamier, thicker batters, so I wasn’t too sure about this. I remember thinking to myself that I’d be tempted to add more flour if I had any. Ah well. It was an experiment. For all I knew, it was supposed to be like this.

Finally, revisit that cream cheese filling and just plop it on top of the chocolate. I was trying to keep it from touching the foil, but I don’t know if there’s a legitimate reason for that.

And then bake! I’m not a big chocolate lover, but even I had to admit that they smelled pretty amazing.

Hubby had the foresight to stick these back in a warm oven for a few minutes before serving them. This left the the cupcakes warm, fudgey, and scrumptious.

Scrumptious, I tell you.

When I can I make these again?