Banana Oatmeal Cookies with Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chips

Last weekend after Alex and I returned from Whistler we went on something of a baking bonanza because we returned to an entire bunch of overripe bananas.  I was originally planning on making banana bread but we always make banana bread so I decided to be a little more creative.  Let's just say that Alex wasn't thrilled with the whole idea but I was pretty pumped to be in the kitchen.  It has been so long since I had time to bake/cook that I got a little excited and overambitious (we had stock going and dinner to prep while I was baking).  These cookies were the perfect breakfast cookie - they weren't too sweet and who doesn't love oatmeal and bananas for breakfast?  I have no shame in admitting that I ate one or two cookies most mornings before work.  I also had a few after work, but that's beside the point.  Unfortunately I didn't do a very good job of mixing the dough (it is a pretty thick dough and I got a little lazy) so the distribution of chocolate chips and peanut butter chips wasn't very even, but I thought the cookies were still pretty delicious.

Recipe after the jump!

Thanksgiving 2012 Desserts - Salted Chocolate Pecan Pie, Peanut Butter Cup Pie and Lemon Curd Tart with Olive Oil

This post is almost ridiculously overdue.  But I forgot my camera at home when I went down to Maryland for Thanksgiving so I had my father take pictures of our dinner.  He helpfully uploaded all of the pictures to my trusty external hard drive, which I then promptly forgot to bring back to NYC with me.  So the pictures languished in Maryland until Dad came up to visit for Christmas and brought my hard drive with him.  Yay!  So I am finally ready to post about the dishes we made for Thanksgiving this year.  Better late than never, right?  And I guess that having a picture of at least one of the items, is better than not having any pictures at all.  Oops.

This salted chocolate pecan pie was my first attempt at making my own pie crust and I think that I really should have added a little more water to make it hold together.  My pie crust needs a little work.  I need to practice making the crust itself and then folding the edges so they are pretty.  For the record, the pie crust looked a little better before we packed it in the car for the drive down to Maryland and Alex squished it with his laptop bag.  Twice.  The filling was really tasty (and rich, which pecan pie should be), although I didn't really get the salt as much as I wish I had.  Also, the pie never really set up.  We baked it for the recommended time and then added a tiny bit more time, but when we cut into it that evening there was some serious oozing.  As for the peanut butter cup pie, I don't think I have ever served a richer dessert.  If you think pecan pie is rich, you have never experienced this peanut butter cup pie.  It was good but it was really sweet and really really rich.  The crust also didn't hold together as well as I would have liked - perhaps I need more butter if I ever make it again?  The lemon curd tart was perhaps my favorite of the desserts.  The lemon curd filling was lovely and I loved the flavor of the olive oil in the dessert.  I thought it was a really nice touch.  But if you are looking at the recipe and thinking about using a 10-inch tart pan instead of a 9-inch tart pan, don't do it.  We unwittingly made that mistake and then had to double the filling because the amount the recipe produced just wasn't going to cut it.  And then our crust was too thin.  Of the three recipes I would be most likely to make the lemon curd tart again (and make it exactly as written).  If I were to make the salted chocolate pecan pie again it would take some additional cooking time and perhaps a different crust...  If I am being entirely honest, I probably wouldn't make the peanut butter cup pie again.  I just think there are better peanut butter pie recipes out there.

Recipes after the jump!

Banana Bread with Peanut Butter Chips

I wasn't going to post this recipe yet, but I couldn't stand June having only six posts, when I had others teed up and ready to go.  And by teed up and ready to go I really mean that I made the recipe, I have pictures of it and I have a critique in mind.  The logical thing to do would be to wait until tomorrow and sleep on it, but I just can't.  So, this post is going to be short and sweet.  I also have another post halfway teed up for a Susan Spicer recipe (picture and a critique in mind, but no recipe typed out as of yet), but I just didn't have the energy to work up another post this evening.  So June will just have to survive with 7 measly posts.  

I accidentally ripped off the tops of our bananas (again) earlier this week so I knew I had to make banana bread (or something else involving overripe bananas) this weekend.  I really need to start handling our bananas more carefully to avoid ripping the tops off all the time.  The bananas in NYC just seem so flimsy compared to the ones I am used to.  I swear the tops just rip right off with almost no provocation.  Anyway, I did it on Thursday so I had a few days to think about what I should make and I came to the conclusion that I just wanted to try something new, but easy.  I was going to make a banana bread with peanut butter and a swirl of jelly, but Alex was a little skeptical of the addition of jelly.  And then I was going to add walnuts, but Alex pitched his usual anti-nut stink, so I gave up on that.  I thought about it some more and then when it came down to it I got lazy and decided to just add peanut butter chips and call it a day.  So there you have it.  I also played with my standard banana bread recipes to add in a little moisture using a combination of vegetable oil and Greek yogurt, instead of butter, creme fraiche or sour cream.  All in all I thought it was a very successful banana bread.  It has a great light, moist crumb and a nice peanut butter flavor.  I was worried about it being too sweet, but it really isn't.  The balance of peanut butter to banana is perfect so you taste both without either flavor overwhelming the other.  And I think we made the right choice in leaving out the jelly, but I might still try it out in a future banana bread recipe...

Recipe after the jump!

Mindy Fox's Peanut Soba, Cabbage and Chicken Salad

This recipe was one of the many I found (and bookmarked) at Serious Eats in the past few weeks.   Until recently I read random reviews and taste tests at Serious Eats, but I never tried out their recipes.  Then I realized that they have some pretty awesome recipes.  Oops.  Take this recipe for instance.  I have never heard of Mindy Fox (and I still don't know who she is), but Serious Eats had two of her recipes on the site, both of which I was really excited to try in the future.  We just happened to get around to making this one first because we made asparagus for lunch yesterday and her other recipe on Serious Eats is for a raw asparagus salad.  That might be a little too much asparagus in one day for Alex.

The thing I liked most about this recipe is that it's hearty and filling, but still feels light because of the cabbage and radish salad.  The noodles get a little gummy once you toss them in the peanut sauce, but what do you expect when you use a peanut butter-based sauce?  Peanut butter is gummy by definition and the noodles are starchy, which just gums things up more.  We tried lightly oiling the cooking water for the noodles and then rinsed them well after cooking, but they still have the tendency to form one sticky noodle mass once you toss with the peanut sauce.  Luckily, I have no problem with sticky noodle masses provided that the flavors are good.  And once you toss the noodles with the cabbage salad the lime juice dressing from the cabbage helps to loosen things up a bit.  I guess my other complaint would be how complicated this salad is.  It takes two pots (or one if you cook the noodles in the same pot that the chicken poached in, which is what we did, but you still need to rinse the pot out/wash it between uses), a few mixing bowls, a mandoline (to shred the cabbage and to thinly slice the radishes), a knife, a mini food processor/blender, a colander and so on and so forth.  Because each element is made individually it doubles the amount of work.  However, keeping the cabbage-radish salad and the herbs separate from the noodles until the very end makes the dish feel fresher and lighter.  So I guess the sheer number of dirty dishes is something that you just have to accept and deal with if you want to make the salad.  In the end it is worth it, but it does make cleaning up something of a process. 

Recipe after the jump!

Banana Chocolate Chip Cake with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

Sometimes when you're me recipes come about by accident.  Take this cake for instance.  I wasn't planning on making a cake this weekend.  It was actually the very last thing I had in mind this weekend.  But when I went to break off a banana from our bunch on Sunday for breakfast I ripped the stems off the entire bunch.  Oops.  Which meant all of those four bananas had to be used or eaten.  Stat.  So I was going to make banana bread, but after making a loaf of Zucchini Cornbread Saturday I wanted to do something a little different.  I decided that the logical thing to do was to make the banana cake that I remembered from Susan Spicer's cookbook.  I grabbed the cookbook to make sure we had everything and somehow we did.  It was clearly meant to happen.  Everything from the unintentional banana demolition to the Zucchini Cornbread was pointing me towards this cake.  So I baked a cake.  And for the record, this was my very first attempt at a layer cake  So any issues with frosting, etc. should be excused.  I tried.  It might not be pretty but I should get some points for effort.  One thing I will say is that I wish I had just a little more frosting to spread between the layers of cake.  There just wasn't enough to cover the whole cake and still have a nice layer in there in the middle.  Oh well.

My cake was yummy.  Really yummy.  I had two pieces.  And I know that I have a sweet tooth, but I never have two pieces of cake.  I typically don't like cake that much.  Cupcakes yes, cake no.  Cakes are never moist enough for me and I don't like most frostings.  But this cake was very moist and the peanut butter cream cheese frosting was delicious.  I licked my fingers after frosting the cake.  A lot.  I love peanut butter and chocolate together.  With or without banana that flavor combo is a winner in my book.  But when you add in the banana here it all just comes together so well.  It's delicious.  I briefly considered eating a piece for breakfast, but I decided that was entirely too gluttonous.  I guess that I'm just going to have to wait until after dinner.

Recipe after the jump!

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Buckeyes

Oh yum.  These things are delicious.  And addicting.  Apparently peanut butter buckeyes are named after the nut of the state tree of Ohio.  And they are named that after the tree because they look like the nuts.  If you Google buckeyes you will eventually see what I mean.  I found one picture here on Serious Eats where the resemblance is quite obvious.  Anyway, I decided to make these chocolate-covered peanut butter confections for two reasons.  First, my dad is from Ohio so it just seemed appropriate.  Second, I love the combination of peanut butter and chocolate.  I guess there was a third reason - they just looked so easy to make!  So I made them and omg.  So good.  I brought like 30 of these bad boys into work and they were gone in minutes.  And Alex and I combined ate far more of them than was probably wise, but I just couldn't stop myself.  I loved the salty-sweet combination and the smooth and creamy peanut butter center.  I'm glad that I used a mixture of dark and semisweet chocolate to dip the buckeyes in because I think milk chocolate would have been far too sweet, but dark chocolate alone might not have been quite sweet enough.  I also found that my favorite way to eat these candies is right out of the freezer.  I love them when they are frozen (hence the ice crystals you can see on the buckeyes in the picture - they were fresh out of the freezer).  You can't leave them out for long because they will melt (due to the high butter content), but they are worth the hassle.  Promise.

I think we might have found a new Christmas tradition!

Recipe after the jump!

Baked Double Chocolate Loaf with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Spread

So I have been holding onto this recipe for a long time and waiting for a "special" occasion to make it. Really, I was waiting for someone else to come over so it wouldn't just be Alex and I inhaling our way through an entire cake. I got the recipe from a Tasting Table email, but it was from one of the Baked cookbooks so I was super excited for it. I just knew it was going to be delicious. Not only do I love the combination of chocolate and peanut butter, but it was a Baked recipe and after baking and loving the Baked Brownies, I had utter faith in this recipe.

Sadly, I was a little disappointed. Don't get me wrong - the recipe isn't bad. I just felt like it was a little off. For instance, the cake to frosting ratio is just way off. I'm not one who generally likes a ton of frosting on my cakes or cupcakes, but this cake was so dense and dry that it really needed more frosting. The cake was really deeply and intensely chocolaty (which you would expect given the amount of cocoa powder and dark chocolate that went into the cake), but forkfuls of plain cake were just lacking something. The cake was almost more of a brownie than a cake. And given that there was buttermilk, oil and eggs in the cake I just expected it to be a little more moist. Instead it was bordering on dry and crumbly. Actually, it was so crumbly that I literally couldn't get a piece of it to take a picture of because every piece I tried to cut basically exploded into a pile of crumbs with frosting on top. I tasted the batter so I knew that it wouldn't be a very sweet cake, but I expected the addition of the chocolate chunks and the frosting to make all of the difference. I think that if I make this cake again in the future I will turn it into cupcakes. And I will double the amount of frosting. And add more buttermilk so that the cake is far moister. I will also consider either substituting semi-sweet chocolate for the dark chocolate in the cake, or adding more sugar to the frosting to sweeten that up. I will probably do one, but not both. Our friends who were over last night recommended perhaps turning the cake into a layer cake (with frosting between the layers), so I guess that could work too. So I'm a little sad that the recipe that I have been saving and holding onto with such faith in its utter awesomeness turned out to be a little less awesome than expected. But given a few tweaks, I still have faith that it can become utterly awesome. It's just not quite there yet.

Recipe after the jump!
Tasting Table

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Cookies

The other night I had a dream about peanut butter and jelly and I woke up with the thought stuck in my head that I absolutely had to make peanut butter and jelly cookies.  Don't ask me where my dream came from, or what else happened in the dream because I have absolutely no idea.  I basically rolled over in bed and told Alex that I had a dream about cookies.  Then I immediately got out of bed and went to look up recipes.  I found the 'wichcraft recipe for Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies and decided to modify the recipe a little and add some jelly

So this might sound like a strange recipe, but these very well might be my new favorite cookies.  The peanut butter cookies themselves are delicious, with a slightly dry and crumbly texture (which is a little like shortbread) and a little crunch/texture from the toasted oats.  The cookies aren't that sweet, and are almost a little salty.  Then you get a mouthful of the creamy peanut butter filling combined with the jelly and it's a total epiphany.  It has that whole salty-sweet thing going on that I love, plus I think the combination is every child's absolute fantasy.  Now if you don't like peanut butter (and I have been informed that some people just don't like it), these are definitely not going to be your new fave cookie recipe.  You might want to stick to chocolate chip.  Or anything else really.  But if you love peanut butter as much as Alex and I do, then you need to try these.  They are fun and totally different from your typical bake-sale cookie selection, but once you try one you will be in love.

Recipe after the jump!

Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

Levain Bakery makes absolutely amazing dark chocolate peanut butter cookies.  They are fantastic, as well as gigantic.  I was baking cookies as a gift for some friends the other day when I decided to make some dark chocolate peanut butter chip cookies of my own.  My cookies are a little less sweet than Levain Bakery's cookies, but they are incredibly chocolatey - far more so than Levain's.  If you love dark chocolate, these cookies are decadent and I highly recommend them.  But if you want a sweet cookie, and are more of a milk chocolate lover, you are going to need to use semisweet chocolate rather than bittersweet.  While the taste of peanut butter is definitely present, these cookies are all about the chocolate.  My friends loved them and so did I.


Recipe after the jump!