Peanut Butter Fudge Ripple Ice Cream

Another winning David Lebovitz ice cream recipe!  Rich, creamy peanut butter ice cream with fudge ripple swirled through... plus I tossed in some roughly chopped Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to put it over the top. 

Both the ice cream and fudge ripple recipes are from The Perfect Scoop, my go-to ice cream bible, but you can find the peanut butter ice cream recipe online here and the fudge ripple recipe here.  I love that the ice cream doesn't require eggs, making it much faster and less labor intensive than other custard-based ice creams. 

Miso Peanut Butter Grilled Chicken

After buying a big container of miso for making my carrot ginger miso salad dressing, I was looking for other interesting ways to use it. I thought maybe it might go well with peanut butter since it went so well with the nutty sesame oil in the salad dressing, so I did some Googling and found this grilled chicken recipe with just those two ingredients featured. The recipe, which is from a famous Hawaiian chef, Sam Choy, is the subject of raves all over the internet and I had all the ingredients on hand, so why not? 

The photos don't really do it justice, but it was pretty awesome.  Super tender, a teeny bit sweet, but nice and salty and savory...  definitely some umami going on.  I served it with some rice and baby kailan (Chinese broccoli) sauteed in garlic and chili.  Yum.

Another potential peanut butter miso combo recipe: cookies?  I am intrigued.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Ice Cream

I can't believe I haven't posted this ice cream flavor before... it's the first recipe I made from David Lebovitz's "The Perfect Scoop" cookbook way back when I got it, and it's my quick go-to, crowd-pleasing, and easily-made-because-it-doesn't-involve-tempering-egg-yolks ice cream.
 

Chocolate and peanut butter, so you can't go wrong.  Creamy, rich and delicious.... the peanut butter gives it a bit of a mousse texture.  Even more indulgent if you add Reese's peanut butter cups, but we don't get many of those in Indonesia (wah wah).  It calls for half and half, but I used half heavy cream, half milk and it worked quite well.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Shake

Here's a new riff on the delicious banana shake recipe I posted a few months ago: add a spoonful of peanut butter and a squirt of chocolate syrup to make it a whole different drink.  I think the peanut butter helps emulsify the shake- it makes it extra creamy.  Plus, peanut butter and chocolate are a proven winning combo.

Here's what I did:

In a blender or with a stick blender, mix 1 frozen banana with approximately 1 cup of milk, 1 tablespoon of creamy peanut butter and 1 tablespoon of chocolate syrup.  

Enjoy.

Granola Bars, Take 2

After my success with granola bars last week, Tim requested that I make some more, but with peanut butter.  I made mine based on a different recipe, one that didn't involve cooking the bars after forming them.

 

The end result was quite tasty- I like the flavor of these much better than last week.  The consistency was much softer... more like Rice Krispie treats.  Thumbs up, except that they crumbled somewhat when handled.

I used the same technique as the recipe, but switched up the ingredients a bit:

1 cup oatmeal (mine wasn't instant, so I toasted in the oven for about 10 minutes)

1 cup Rice Krispies

1/2 cup slivered almonds (toasted along with the oatmeal)

1/4 cup toasted wheat germ

1/2 cup chocolate chips

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup peanut butter

Heated the honey and brown sugar together until the sugar dissolved, then added peanut butter.  Tossed together all of the dry ingredients and poured the peanut butter sauce over the top.  Pressed it all into a lightly greased 9" x 9" pan.  Cooled, cut and ate!

Peanut Butter Cookies with Peanut M and Ms

We borrowed Mr. Ben's oven this weekend and baked up a storm of cookies... soft peanut butter cookies with peanut M&Ms. 

Pretty good!  Be sure not to let the cookies overbake; take them out of the oven when they look just not quite done and you'll end up with soft and chewy instead of hard and crumbly.

Christmas Cookies

This past weekend, Tim, Ben, Erin and I tried to amp up the Christmas-y feeling here in Jakarta (it's a little limp... I think it's the humidity) by baking some Christmas cookies. 

Tim likes to roll balls between his hands.

But he does not like getting his photo taken.

We made some tried and true favorites:  peanut butter blossoms (I will not tell you how much we paid for the Hershey's kisses. Ridiculous.), chocolate crinkles (I wanted to put these white chocolate/mint Hershey's kisses in these, but they were even more ridiculously expensive and I didn't buy them.), and spicy, chewy ginger cookies.

We made a mess. And drank some beers.

COOOOOKIES!

The kitties alternated between attacking Tim and innocently napping.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I went to the beach for an early spring ladies' getaway, so I needed to bake a quick sweet treat to bring with me.
These peanut butter and oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips fit the bill: sweet, peanuty, rich, super simple.

Banana Peanut Butter "Ice Cream" with Chocolate Chips

Whenever I buy a bunch of bananas, there are always a couple that turn brown before I get a chance to eat them. I peel them, pop them in a bag and throw them in the freezer with the intention to make banana bread with them, which I never do.

When I saw this ingenious idea for turning those ripe, frozen bananas into a no-sugar, no-cream "ice cream," I was intrigued. Plus, this recipes also has peanut butter and chocolate. How can it be wrong? Give it a try... something about the consistency of the frozen bananas when they're whizzed up in the food processor mimics the creaminess of ice cream, so there's no need to add anything else! The recipe called for cocoa powder, but I threw in some chocolate chips for crunch. I'm sure either would be lovely, though.

Spicy Peanut/Sesame Noodles

For some reason, sesame/peanut butter noodles are one of my favorite things. Spicy, creamy, garlicy and gingery. Plus you can throw in a ton of veggies, whatever you have around. In this case, I threw in grated carrots, snow peas, scallions, and some steamed bok choy. The noodles are good warm right out of the pot, or cold the next day.

PS: Lincoln wanted to give his somewhat mixed review of the noodles:
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Peanut Butter Banana Chocolate Chip Bread

I had some bananas getting a serious sun tan on the counter, so I thought I'd make some banana bread. I wasn't quite in the mood for regular banana bread, though, so peanut butter, banana and chocolate chip bread it was. The combination reminds me a sundae I always used to order at Friendly's as a kid... they discontinued it early in my childhood and I never forgave them. Jerks.

This bread is really good- really rich, though, more like a cake. I bet you could cook it in a shallower cake pan or pie plate and cut it in wedges. A great flavor combo.

Peanut Butter Granola Bars

So I've wanted to make my own granola bars for a while, preferably peanut butter ones. Lots of recipes I looked up had corn syrup in them, which sorta defeated the purpose of making my own as opposed to buying the ones in the grocery store with all of the extra crap and preservatives in them.

This recipe from Giada DeLaurentis looked decent, and it was... but I wouldn't really call it a granola bar. It was more of a soft, crumbly, sweet bar cookie, as opposed to a crispy, crunchy, slightly sweet granola bar. Tasty, but not what I was looking for.

The search continues!!!

Cookie Extravaganza, Part Deux

A second Christmas cookie extravaganza, this time in preparation for my office's pot-luck Christmas dessert party.

This time I limited myself to two kinds of cookies, both of which were simple drop cookies, since I was cooking on a weeknight:

1. I resurrected the chewy ginger cookies from the first cookie extravaganza since they were so good.

2. I also tried out these peanut butter blossom cookies, although I substituted milk chocolate chips for the requisite Hershey's kisses.

Mmmmmm!

Cookie Extravaganza!

Chuck and I, with the help of Mark and Leah, made about a thousand cookies to put in Christmas tins and hand out to friends. Here are the recipes!

Pecan Tassies: mini pecan pies, made with the tart press that Martha stuck in my stocking one year.

Matcha (Green Tea) Cookies: sugar cookies with green tea powder mixed in.

Turtle Thumbprints: chocolate, pecan and caramel goodness.

Ginger Chewies: gingery soft and chewy cookies with raw sugar on top for crunch.

Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Treats: No photo, but you can imagine...

Chocolate-Dipped Coconut Macaroons: another Ina recipe, dipped in semi-sweet chocolate.

Jam-Filled Cream Cheese Cookies

A Martha Stewart Every Day Food recipe that I can't find online, but that's probably ok because they were a FAIL anyway... they were supposed to look like this (which about 2 of ours did):

But the vast majority of them looked like starfish writhing on the ocean floor as they bleed to death:

Pistachio Refrigerator Cookies

Not sure where Martha got the recipe, but here it is:

2 cups flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
2/3 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
¼ cup finely chopped pistachios
non pareils
green food coloring

Mix dry ingredients. Cream butter, sugar, egg, and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Add dry ingredients and mix.

Using 1 cup of dough, add green food coloring, then add chopped nuts. Shape into a 10” roll. Wrap in waxed paper and freeze for 10 minutes.

Roll remaining dough into a 10x6 rectangle. Place other roll of dough on the rectangle and gently wrap the dough around the nut dough and seal it.

Roll the whole log in nonpareils sprinkled on waxed paper.
Wrap the dough in the waxed paper. Freeze for about 20 minutes. Slice about 1/8” thick. Place about 2” apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake at 375 for about 8 to 10 minutes. Makes about 6 dozen.

No-Bake Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chewies

Chuck and I decided to taste-test a cookie we were considering making as part of our Christmas cookie experiment... we thought this one looked good because it combined peanut butter and chocolate and was a no-bake, so we figured we could make it at the same time as another cookie and not have them compete for oven time and space.

This cookie is perfectly easy. Perfect to satisfy a random weeknight chocolate craving, for sure.

Alas, it's not quite perfect for our purposes... not what we were looking for in a Christmas cookie. Too soft in consistency and not pretty enough to stand up to the other, flashier cookies we're planning to make.

Sesame/Peanut Noodles with Tatsoi, Snow Peas and Yellow Pepper

I modified this simple Rachael Ray sesame noodles recipe to my liking, and it was really good!

- served it warm, not cold

- made the sauce as directed, but added some fresh orange juice to brighten it up

- used whole wheat spaghetti

- for veggies, I used raw shredded carrots, cilantro, scallions, yellow pepper slices, as well as snow peas and tatsoi (this week's CSA prize), both of which I blanched in the pasta water very briefly

Happy Birthday, Chuckie: Take Two

For Chuckie's birthday kegger, I made a million (well, 72, minus the 7 or so I accidentally flipped onto the bottom of the oven) bite-sized chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. Tasty!

I doubled-down on this easy chocolate cupcake recipe, and made 2 times Ina Garten's PB frosting recipe. Since I was using the mini-muffin tins, I sprayed the tins rather than use paper liners, and I cooked the cupcakes for 10 minutes.