So despite the debate raging about nuts in brownies, most people not allergic to nuts can agree that peanut butter and chocolate are really yummy together. My sister makes an incredible chocolate peanut butter cup so I snagged her recipe to make David some treats for Valentine’s Day.
Kate is so fancy and includes lovely chocolate filigree on top of hers:
I had to sneak my production in when David wasn’t looking so had to just go for the basics. They are easy to make and so, so good. I accidentally ate 2 before breakfast this morning. :)
They’re pretty easy to make but there’s a little secret to the filling. There are endless ways to vary this but this is how I did it:
Filling: I took 1/2 cup of peanut butter (I used natural, nothing added peanut butter), added 2 tablespoons of sugar and 2 crushed graham crackers. The graham crackers are the key because they give the peanut butter a lovely crunch that makes all the difference in the final candy. I ended up with about 1/4 cup left over but I think it’s easier to mix in the larger quantity and really, I had no problem eating the leftover crunchy, sweet peanut butter on some bread later. :)
Coating: I took 3 bars of Ghiradelli Milk Chocolate (12 ounces, but I had some left over), chopped it up and melted all but 2 squares worth in a double boiler. After that melted, I removed it from heat and added in the non-melted 2 squares (Kate taught me this, its called “seeding” and the non-melted chocolate teaches the melted chocolate how to set up right and stay shiny and smooth when it hardens). I stirred that all together until it all melted.
Then, I lined a mini muffin tin with cupcake/candy liners. I spooned chocolate in to cover the bottom of the wrapper, rolled the peanut butter mixture into a ball (about the size of a large marble) and put it on top of the chocolate. Then I spooned more chocolate over to cover the peanut butter and filled the cupcake liner. Repeated that for all the tins and popped it into the refrigerator overnight. That’s it. Totally easy and looks harder than it actually is – my kind of craft! Thanks Kate and Happy Birthday! :)
Okay, so I made 4 batches of brownies in 6 days. Yes, that’s a little extreme but we had so much snow, I had to do something. And besides, brownies are the perfect food. Chocolate and bread, yum!
Anyway, this was all part of an experiment and one that I thank my husband for suffering through. Poor guy had to eat a lot of brownies. But it was worth it because I now have my favorite brownie recipe. My requirements were taste, texture, speed, ease of recipe, only use pantry staples and smallest number of dishes generated.
Blizzard of 2010 Brownies
2 oz of unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cup of butter, plus a bit for the pan
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp coarse salt (definitely use coarse salt if you have it. huge difference!)
Preheat oven to 350. Butter a 8×8x2 pan. Melt the butter and the chocolate together, stirring frequently to combine. Remove from heat. Add eggs, sugar and vanilla and stir to combine. In another small bowl, combine flour, cinnamon and salt. Add flour mixture to the chocolate mixture and stir until combined. Pour into the buttered pan and bake for 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool, cut and try not to eat all in one sitting.
One more note: feel free to make this recipe, sell it, sell brownies made from it, don’t give me credit – that’s all fine. Just don’t add nuts to it. Nuts ruin a good brownie. :)
Boy howdy, did it snow here this last week. We got 43 inches of snow in 6 days and most of those days were so windy that it was technically a blizzard and we couldn’t see more than 20 feet outside of the windows. Thankfully, we didn’t lose power and didn’t really have anywhere else we had to go, so it really wasn’t a bad experience, though cabin fever is definitely starting to set in.
We have several trees down in the woods and the old dugouts by the baseball field have collapsed partly. The funniest is the big backstop behind home plate.
Its just made of chain link fence, so full of holes, and its like a real regulations size backstop – but the snow fell so fast and wet that the weight of it has folded the backstop in two. These were all things we were going to ignore for awhile but now we might need to take them down sooner rather than later.
It’s kind of hard to tell what this picture is so I’ll just tell you. Its the 4 foot fence we have in the backyard for the dogs and those little black squares are the very tippy top.
The dogs are loving that they don’t sink all the way through the snow and that the fence is effectively 6 inches tall now. They just step right over. Fortunately, its very easy to see where they went. :)
I think I’m about done talking about snow so I think my next post will be about brownies…
We’re supposed to get another epic storm today. Amazing. I’m just happy that today is a telework day for David and I went grocery shopping on Wednesday so we are pretty well set for the upcoming Snowpocalypse. Or Snowmaggedon. Or as the title suggests, my personal favorite – Kaiser Snowze. Or that today is the Day Before the Day After Tommorrow. I love snarkiness and nothing like a good snow storm with panic shopping, long lines and shutdowns to bring out the snarkiness in people everywhere.
I’m still fretting about losing power, like I fretted in December. And we’re running around getting prepared but I’m also reading more about chickens
We got the expected 2 inches of snow on Saturday, plus 6 more unexpected ones along with temperatures that hovered in the teens for most of the time. It turned a “work-on-the-garden” weekend into a “cozy-hunker-down-inside” weekend and we made the most of it.
I made the “Sunday Dinner Hostess Apron” from Weekend Sewing
David took the kids and the puppies out for several romps in the snow.
I started a new knitting project. I love the start of a project, such possibilities. I’m using a baby alpaca yarn and its really soft and lovely. Its been hard to put down!
And Bernie worked on being cute the whole weekend and succeeded admirably.
