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!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Last year, I worked late on Valentine’s Day. When I got home, I found that hubby had made an elaborate dinner that ended with this delicious dessert.

This year, I had the day off, so I thought I’d return the favor.

I should mention that this recipe is stolen, once again, from Chef John at Food Wishes. It’s also available on all recipes, which I wish I’d realized before I watched his video and transcribed notes on how to do everything. I have yet to be disappointed by ANY of Chef John’s recipes, so I really recommend that you check out his site if there’s something you’ve been wanting to make.

The first step was supposed to be in a double boiler, but since I don’t have one, I just used a small saucepan on very low heat. Basically, melt together a bit of unsalted butter, brewed espresso (or leftover hazelnut coffee from that morning, in my case…sue me), and dark chocolate.When I was younger, I experimented a lot with melting chocolate, so I already had a good idea how to do this.

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I moved the mixture to a clean bowl at this point, starting over with the same small saucepan. Add a bit of marsala wine or rum (I just had rum)…

Sugar… (don’t worry about this looking funky, it’s the unbleached, organic sugar that hubby and I put in our coffee).

And two egg yolks. Each of the puppies got a small snack of egg white, so they approved of this dessert wholeheartedly.

Cook it over medium-low heat until it’s frothy and thickened. At one point, I think I panicked that mine wasn’t doing anything, so I brought the saucepan into my office and compared the mixture in Chef John’s video with my own. I was reassured and decided to be patient. Eventually, it did look like this:

At that point, add in a bit of mascarpone cheese and stir it in.

Add this mixture to the chocolate mixture

And whisk it together.

Let it cool down for a while. I took this opportunity to make meatballs for our romantic, candlelit dinner.

When you’re ready to continue, take some heavy cream.

And beat the crap out of it until it looks like this. Chef John suggested doing this by hand to save on dishes, adding that it doesn’t take long, but it took me a while and I actually got really warm doing it! I swear I’m not that out of shape…. But next time I’ll use my electric mixer.

Add about half of the cream to the chocolate mixture

Fold it in until mixed, then add in the rest and fold that in, too. It should look like this.

I decided to be fancy and use a pastry bag to pipe my mousse. I’d never used one before, and I found that I had a lot of trouble filling the thing with only two hands. I ended up propping it against the fridge with my heavy cream and going from there (ignore the celery, it was for the spaghetti and meatballs).

Yay, it’s ready to pipe into martini glasses!

I’m not sure if it was what I was doing that was intriguing, or maybe the fact that I was talking to myself trying to get this to work out right, but the dogs found this step REALLY interesting.

Anyway, this is  what I ended up with!

Okay, I suck at piping. Maybe I needed a bigger tip. But I was still proud of this. Dusted it with some cocoa powder and stuck it in the fridge until dessert time.

Yum!

Decadent. Romantic. Lovely.

I hope you enjoyed your Valentine’s Day <3

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?