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

Pumpkin Cheesecake Muffins

It’s October.

I need pumpkin-themed food.

Need.

So I made these. I’ve been making them for the past few years, every fall. In the past, I’ve taken them to work and had very positive reactions. I’ve also had positive reactions from hubby, even though he isn’t a fan of too much pumpkin. They’re just so GOOD!

The extent of my pan prep is right here: 18 cupcake liners. Mine are foil, but paper works just as well.

There are four mixtures that you need to make before you can assemble the muffins. The first one is the sweetened cream cheese filling. This time around, I used light cream cheese. I accidentally bought it because an elderly couple was camped out in front of the cream cheese display and oblivious to the fact that they were blocking everyone who wanted some. I just reached an arm in and this is what came out. I figured that even though light isn’t as good when it’s just smeared on a bagel, we probably wouldn’t notice the difference in baked goods (I was right).

Put it in a bowl with an egg, some vanilla extract, and some brown sugar.

All mixed up, this is what it looked like.

Set that aside for a bit and start on the second mixture: the streusel topping. Here’s some flour and sugar. The recipe says white sugar, but I always substitute brown sugar for some of it. There’s also some cinnamon here but you can’t see it because I accidentally covered it up. And cold butter. I could have added pecans but I didn’t have any. I still haven’t recovered from dumping half my pantry this summer when we moved.

Anyway, mix it up with a pastry blender.

And set that aside, as well.

Okay, the third mixture is simply the dry ingredients in your regular muffins. This is all-purpose flour, sugar, baking powder, ground cinnamon, and salt. I made a well in the middle in preparation for the wet ingredients.

And here’s the fourth mixture: wet ingredients. Egg, vanilla, pumpkin, and olive oil in an ugly yellow bowl.

All mixed up!

Pour the wet ingredients in the well of the dry ingredients.

And gently mix it up.

Scoop the mixture into your 18 cupcake liners. I used an ice cream scooper to minimize the mess.

Top with the cream cheese mixture, which of course is the best part.

And then add the streusel topping.

And then bake them! They sure look and smell good.

After a few minutes, I scooped them out with a spoon and let them finish cooling on wire racks.

I had no idea until now that this was my only picture of them being cut open and eaten. It is dark and blurry. I blame the deliciousness and the sugar from keeping me from being able think clearly or to take a decent photograph. Please, use your imagination.

Or even better, make your own so that you can see first hand!

Oh, and if you were wondering, using light cream cheese didn’t seem to have an effect on taste. So good!

 

 

P.S. Stay tuned for a guest post from my good friend Jacki! She will be writing about white chicken chili and pumpkin donuts. Can’t wait to see