Tag Archives: peanut butter

September 28, 2015 · 8:00 am

Peanut Butter Rice Krsipie Roll

A coworker requested peanut butter krispie treats. With chocolate. I played with the idea before when I made these, but I wanted to do it in a fun different way.

I followed the recipe on the cereal box (1/4 cup butter, 1 bag mini mallows, 6 cups cereal), and added 1 cup of creamy peanut butter to the pot with the butter and mallows.

Once it was all melted I poured it on top of the cereal and stirred it all up. It was actually easier to stir than normal because of all that peanut butter.

I pressed it into a sheet pan with greased up hands, then topped it with chocolate chips.
I put the pan under the broiler for maaaybe like a minute or 2. Just enough to soften the chocolate.

Then I spread the chocolate with a spreader…

Definitely doesn’t need to be perfect here.

Cuz then I rolled it up into a log!

Carter likes to watch in the kitchen from atop his kitchen stool my dad built him.

Once I had it all rolled up I wrapped it in wax paper so that it would stay together, and let it cool/harden overnight.

The next morning I sliced it up!

Gorgeousness golden peanut buttery krispies with a perfect chocolate swirl.

I brought these to work with me and they were a hit!

These are seriously so good. Personally it was a tad to much chocolate for me, but everyone else disagreed and said they were perfect!

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Filed under Misc

Tagged as chocolate, peanut butter, rice krispy treats

August 27, 2013 · 8:00 am

Soft & Chewy Peanut Butter M&M Cookies

As much as I fell in love with my Perfect M&M Cookies, it’s possible that I love these more.

A coworker said my Perfect M&M Cookie was “okay.” I definitely appreciate honest feedback, but I wanted to know from him what would have made it amazing. Turns out the problem wasn’t my cookie, it just wasn’t his type of cookie. His type of cookie is peanut butter. So I told him all about my Peanut Butter Surprise Cookies and of course he wanted me to make them soon.

About a week later, he asked me to make him a whole batch of cookies to take with him to a little friend reunion party thing he was going to. He also told me that he was going to claim them as his own. I knew no one would believe him so I didn’t mind. 😉

I knew I wanted to do a peanut butter cookie base, but I wanted to try something different than the Reese’s inside. Ultimately I decided to do M&M’s because 1- he had a criticism for my last M&M cookie, and 2- I liked the fact that the candy would be mixed throughout the cookie and not just in the center. Of course, I had to go with peanut butter M&M’s this time. (I know you’re probably wondering why I didn’t just use Reese’s Pieces… the answer is because I’m not a fan. Besides, peanut butter M&M’s are bigger.)

I followed the cookie dough recipe from my Peanut Butter Surprise Cookies, except I stirred in about 1 1/2 cups of peanut butter M&M’s at the end. I used a cookie scoop to make sure I had uniform sized cookies, and baked at 300* for 15 minutes.

For these cookies, baking at a lower temperature for longer makes them so perfectly soft and chewy. They look a little puffy and under-cooked when they come out of the oven, but as they cool on the cookie sheet they settle and set up.

These cookies are best when eaten within 2 days, but can be stored in an airtight container for up to a week or so.

8 Comments

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Tagged as m&m's, peanut butter

August 16, 2013 · 8:00 am

Reese’s Peanut Butter Ice Cream Cake

My brother joined the navy earlier this year. We are very close – he actually has lived with me for most of the last 3 years.

He came to town on leave to surprise me. He’s been gone for 6 months, and this was the first time in our lives we’ve been away from each other for more than a couple weeks. It was a really good surprise, I cried for like 20 minutes straight. My sneaky husband knew everything and got it all on video. 🙂

While he was here we had a big family BBQ so everyone could see him. I (of course) asked to bring dessert. My brother is after all my best ~~fan~~ tester.

I had been eyeing this cake by Lindsay for a while now, and I knew an ice cream cake would be a perfect summer BBQ dessert that would impress not only my brother, but the entirety of my sweets loving family.

I decided to switch up her recipe a bit. Mostly because (and I know I’m in the minority here) I don’t think caramel and peanut butter belong together. Both are fabulous and both pair perfectly with chocolate, but I like to keep them separate.

Also – this cake is SOOO easy to make. If you can bake a box of brownies, you can make this ice cream cake!

Reese’s Peanut Butter Ice Cream Cake – adapted from Life, Love and Sugar

Ingredients:

1 box brownie mix, plus ingredients called for on box (I used fat free brownies)

8 oz brick cream cheese (I used 1/3 less fat)

1/4 cup milk

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter

8 oz Cool Whip, thawed (I used fat free)

Chocolate Syrup

Large bag Reese’s Miniatures, unwrapped and chopped

Directions:

1. Bake brownies in greased 13×9 pan, but reduce baking time to only 20 minutes. Let cool completely.

2. With stand mixer or electric hand mixer, beat together cream cheese, milk, sugar, and peanut butter until completely combined.

3. Carefully fold Cool Whip into peanut butter mixture.

4. Top cooled brownies with 1 cup of chocolate syrup. Spread all the way to the edges.

5. Drop chopped Reese’s on top of the chocolate syrup in an even but hearty layer.

6. Cover Reese’s in peanut butter mixture and spread smooth.

7. Cover entire pan in plastic wrap and freeze at least 4 hours, or overnight.

8. When ready to eat, cut cake into squares and top each square with more chocolate syrup and chopped Reese’s.

This cake is extremely rich. My brother and my family loved it. Honestly it was a little bit too rich for me to handle, but I’m not a huge chocolate fan anyway so don’t necessarily take my word for it. 😉

I used fat free/low fat everything I could for this recipe. I figured why not – there’s enough sugar in it anyway it’s definitely not going to be low on flavor! Feel free to use the full-fat version if you prefer!

4 Comments

Filed under Brownies, Cakes, Misc

Tagged as brownies, chocolate, ice cream, ice cream cake, peanut butter, reeses

May 17, 2013 · 10:35 am

Reese’s Cupcakes

Tomorrow is a coworker’s birthday. She asked me to bring chocolate cupcakes. Too boring for me, so I had to get fancy.

These are fun, rich, and look fancy!

Reese’s Cupcakes (yields 24 cupcakes)

The cupcake base is the Hershey’s “Perfectly Chocolate” Chocolate Cake. It’s right on the back of the cocoa box. I have made them a couple times here and here. Aaaannnnnd I just realized I didn’t post the actual recipe either time so here it is:

Chocolate Cupcakes – adapted from Hershey’s “Perfectly Chocolate” Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar

1 3/4 cups flour

3/4 cup Hershey’s Cocoa

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

1 cup milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla

1 cup boiling water

(I know it’s a lot of ingredients but it’s easy – I promise!)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*. Mix together all dry ingredients in a large bowl (or stand mixer bowl).

2. Add eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla and beat on medium speed for 2 minutes.

3. Carefully add boiling water and mix in thoroughly by hand. (If you try to use the stand mixer, water will splash everywhere. Trust me. Don’t do it.) Batter will be very thin.

4. Fill cupcake liners about 3/4 the way. Bake for 11 minutes. While they are baking, start unwrapping miniature Reese’s cups.

5. After 11 minutes, remove the cupcake pans from the oven. Carefully press a Reese’s cup into the top of each cupcake and return to the oven. Bake for another 11 minutes.

6. Let cool completely before making the frosting.

Some of the cups sank lower than others for the second half of baking…

By the way, how cute are these liners? They are the only non-super-girly liners I could find with orange on them. I felt like orange was necessary because, hello – Reese’s!

Now on to the good stuff….

Peanut Butter Frosting

Ingredients:

1 lb powdered sugar

1 stick (1/2 cup) salted butter

2/3 cup smooth peanut butter

3 tbsp milk + 2 tbsp milk

2 tsp vanilla

Directions:

1. Put powdered sugar in the bowl first. Cut up the butter into small slices or chunks, and spread out on top of the powdered sugar. Add peanut butter, vanilla, and 3 tbsp of the milk to the bowl. (I know this sounds silly, but putting the powdered sugar on the bottom helps the other ingredients incorporate better.)

2. Mix on low until powdered sugar is incorporated and will no longer fly across the kitchen. Beat on medium speed until frosting is smooth. Add the remaining 2 tbsp of milk one at a time until fully incorporated.

I frosted my cupcakes with a large closed star tip. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to cover the secret Reese’s cup inside the cupcake. Top with other Reese’s cup and ta-da!

These cupcakes are super rich and SO dreamy with the peanut butter frosting. How have I never made peanut butter frosting before?!

8 Comments

Filed under Cakes

Tagged as buttercream, chocolate, peanut butter, reeses

December 5, 2012 · 8:00 am

Chocolate Snowflakes

These chocolate peanut butter cookies are decorated with all white vanilla buttercream. I just love the way the designs pop against the dark cookie!

I decorated each snowflake with a unique design.

I thought I would run out of ideas, but I just kept making them up as I went along.. my husband helped design a couple. (The bottom left snowflake in the pic above was partly his design.)

These are my personal favorites:

They even look cute all together…

Here is my buttercream recipe. It’s very easy and adaptable and perfect to top any cookie!

14 Comments

Filed under Cookies

Tagged as buttercream, chocolate, peanut butter, snowflake, white

November 21, 2012 · 8:35 am

Fall Leaf Cookies

I tried a few new things with these fun fall leaves!

Instead of doing regular sugar cookies, I wanted to do my leaves dark so that the fall colors would really pop. For these I used Bridget’s Chocolate Peanut Butter recipe. They are very yummy!

Normally, I roll my cookies very thin. Most cookie decorators roll 1/4 inch or 3/8 inch thick. That is crazy to me! My cookies are typically less than 1/8 inch thick. I wanted to try doing thick one time to see how I liked it. They look cute thick, but personally I just prefer a higher icing to cookie ratio. 🙂

The third new thing I tried with these was the way I iced them. Normally I outline, flood, detail, etc. Recently I tried pouring the icing over the cookies. This time I dipped them, and let the excess drip off and down the sides. And since I was doing fall leaves in bright fall colors, I swirled the icing. It was fun and each cookie turned out completely different!

Excuse the poor lighting in these photos, it was rainy and yucky this morning!

12 Comments

Filed under Cookies

Tagged as chocolate, icing, orange, peanut butter, red, yellow

November 9, 2012 · 8:40 am

Muddy Buddy Fudge

So everyone knows what Muddy Buddies are, right? Some people call them Puppy Chow. My mom always called it reindeer poop. (Gross, but whatever…)

Anyways, I made this amazing fudge that tastes just like Muddy Buddies!!

I started with a recipe that I am hesitant to even link up, because it’s not really a recipe exactly… it’s a hilarious (but crude) pin I found one day on Pinterest. Click here if you really want to see it. There’s no one to site, but I adapted it anyway so here is my recipe. 🙂

Muddy Buddy Fudge

Ingredients:

1 (14oz) can sweetened condensed milk

1 lb semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter

1 tsp vanilla

Directions:

In a large bowl, combine sweetened condensed milk, chocolate chips, and peanut butter. Melt in 30 second intervals, stirring in between to make it smooth.

When it starts to thicken up and get harder to stir, add the vanilla and stir to get it all mixed in there.

Spray a pan with non-stick cooking spray. (I used a 13×9 and my fudge was pretty thin. A 9×9 would make a nice thick fudge.) Dump the fudgey mixture into the pan and press it down evenly. Let chill for at least an hour or until firm.

Cut into squares and enjoy!!

**If you want to leave out the peanut butter because of allergies (let’s face it – no one really dislikes peanut butter, do they?!), it will still be a good regular fudge recipe!

5 Comments

Filed under Candy

Tagged as chocolate, fudge, peanut butter

July 27, 2012 · 8:00 am

Mini Krispy Cupcakes

So a couple days ago I stumbled across this recipe for small batch rice krispy treats.

GENIUS!!

All the guilt of making your unhealthy snack is gone because you can make just enough for one little dessert! I thought this would be the perfect way to experiment with different flavors without making a ton of it (just in case it turned out yucky… like that could even happen with rice krispies…)

The recipe suggests pressing them into a muffin/cupcake pan (which makes 2). I decided to do a mini muffin pan instead (which made about 12), because everyone knows that the smaller a dessert is, the cuter it is too!

I have to give credit where credit is due here… my husband came up with the idea of dipping the tops in chocolate to make them look like cupcakes! I was going to just press them flat and drizzle them. I guess he’s pretty smart at the chocolate stuff because they turned out great!

I made 2 different kinds!!

Peanut Butter Rice Krispies

Ingredients:

1 tbsp butter

1/4 cup smooth peanut butter

1 cup mini marshmallows

1 1/2 cups rice krispies

Directions:

1. Spray muffin pan with non-stick spray.

2. In a small pot, melt butter, mallows, and peanut butter until smooth.

3. Add the rice krispies straight to the pot and stir until completely coated in goop.

4. Remove pot from heat and carefully scoop krispies into the muffin pan cavaties. Make the tops rounded if you want it to look like a cupcake, or make them flat if you want them to look like little cups.

5. Wait. The hardest part, I know.

6. When they are set up (mine took an hour or 2), melt chocolate, white chocolate, or candy melts to dip or drizzle however you like.

I had just enough mini mallows to do another small batch…

Chocolate Rice Krispies

Ingredients:

2 tbsp butter

1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 cup mini marshmallows

1 1/2 cups rice krispies

Directions:

1. Spray muffin pan with non-stick spray.

2. In a small pot, melt butter, mallows, and chocolate until smooth.

3. Add the rice krispies straight to the pot and stir until completely coated in goop.

5. Wait. The hardest part, I know.

6. When they are set up (mine took an hour or 2), melt chocolate, white chocolate, or candy melts to dip or drizzle however you like.

As soon as I can get to the store to buy more mini mallows, I will be making new krispy recipes!

5 Comments

Filed under Misc

Tagged as chocolate, marshmallows, peanut butter, rice krispy treats, white chocolate

June 19, 2012 · 8:00 am

Peanut Butter Surprise Cookies

My brother and I love candy.

This love of candy is one of the reasons he makes an excellent Target shopping partner. (I have gone to Target with a number of different people and I have discovered that not everyone shops Target the same way. My brother and I are good together at Target because we understand the most important part of the store is the 3 aisles of candy in the far back corner near the seasonal section.)

I recently had a poll on facebook asking people to rate these in order from MOST favorite to LEAST favorite: cookies, cake, ice cream, candy, pie. (For the record, mine is 1. Candy 2. Ice Cream 3. Cake 4. Cookies 5. Pie) It was fun seeing everyone’s answers!

Anywhoo… on one of my brother’s candy trips to Target, he disovered this:

It’s basically like a Hershey bar except each individual bar is a separate Reese’s.

I knew I had to make something with them, and this is what I came up with!

It’s a Peanut Butter cookie dough wrapped around an individual Reese’s bar, then baked long and slow so that they are soft, chewy, and melty chocolate on the inside!

Peanut Butter Surprise Cookies – adapted from Simply Recipes

Ingredients:

1 stick butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup peanut butter

1 egg

1 1/4 cup flour

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

Directions:

1. Beat butter for 2 minutes. Add sugars and beat for 2 minutes more, scraping sides of bowl halfway through. Add peanut butter and egg and mix until combined. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Slowly add to sugar mixture until completely combined. Let chill for at least 2 hours.

2. Cut apart Reeses bars. Get a ball of dough about 2-3 tablespoons and flatten with your fingers. Put the little Reeses bar inside and wrap it up all snug. I sort of rolled it into a little log shape after the bar was completely covered.

3. Space the cookie logs about 2-3 inches apart on a parchment lined cookie sheet, they will spread quite a bit.

4. Bake at 300* for 15 minutes. Let cool for about 15 minutes on the pan before moving to a drying rack. They will come out of the oven a little poofy so they need to set and settle as they cool.

These might be the best cookies I’ve ever had. Especially if you eat it when it’s still warm!

4 Comments

Filed under Cookies

Tagged as chocolate, peanut butter, reeses

June 12, 2012 · 8:00 am

Cake Mix Peanut Butter Brownies

If you’ve been around here for a significant amount of time, you know how I feel about chocolate. I’ve made brownies twice. This time and this time.

But for some reason I have been wanting to make some brownies lately. I got the perfect opportunity when a friend asked me to bring dessert over for a small dinner group. It just so happens that the favorite candy of this group is Reese’s.

I compiled a few different ideas and ingreients from different recipes to make my very own recipe. You can find my inspiration here, here, and here.

Cake Mix Peanut Butter Brownies – recipe by me!

Ingredients:
1 box chocolate cake mix
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1 package Reese’s cup minis

Directions:
1. Preheat oven 350*. Line 13×9 pan with foil then spray with non-stick spray.