Toasted Marshmallow Peanut Butter Cookies

1/2 cup softened butter
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cups flour
1/4 cup mini marshmallows, cut in half.

Preheat the oven to 375 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Beat butter and peanut butter until combined. Add the baking soda, baking powder and both sugars, beat until combined. Beat in the egg and vanilla, until combined. Beat in the flour (by hand is easiest, it will be a very stiff dough). Fold in the marshmallows. Roll generous tablespoons of dough into 1" balls and place them on the prepped sheet. Bake for 7-9 minutes, let cool on the tray for a minute or two then transfer to a cooking rack.
(adapted from BH&G Ultimate Cookie Book or UCB)

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Ok, you ready? Here is the deep, meaningful back story to these cookies. I wanted to bake something and I didn't want to leave the apartment. I had peanut butter and marshmallows. That's it. I didn't even scour the nets for a recipe. I still haven't made that many cookies from the UCB, which I got for Christmas, so I decided to step away from my go-to recipe and try out their classic peanut butter cookie. The marshmallows were the only adaptation from me, but they turned out wicked good. It's a good recipe, different levels of butter (my go to has half shortening, making them crispier) and different ratios of baking soda/powder made these a little thinner. I think. Well, I know they are thinner, but I don't know for a fact that that's why. Anyway, they are quite good, I think I like the slightly chewier and more buttery flavor of all butter over half and half with shortening. Let's make these things.

Pretty standard cookie making here. First I mixed the butter and peanut butter. Added the sugars, baking powder and soda.More mixing. Egg and vanilla, mix again. Now the flour. The recipe said add it a bit at a time, using an electric mixer. Once it started getting hard on the mixer it said to stop and use a spoon. I said screw all that and did the whole recipe by hand. Because I'm like that. So I just dumped it all in, mixed it up and folded in the marshmallows. I didn't have minis, those would have been easiest. I had the bigguns and I cut them into half inch pieces. Or so. Then I rolled them into 1" (or so) balls and made an attempt at crosshatches. The marshmallows made that tricky, but it worked well enough. Then baked for 7-9 minutes and out. Lovely. You want to let them sit for a minute before trying to move them. Otherwise the marshmallow will be too liquid and the cookies too soft and it will just be a disaster. Crap, I should have taken a picture of that. But I ate it. Oh well. I liked the way the marshmallows toast up, it adds a nice level of flavor. So next time you want something that's familiar but a little but different or don't feel like leaving the house to get more ingredients, give these a shot. Now, when I'm making peanut butter cookies I always use chunky peanut butter. I like the texture the extra peanut bits gives. But I've known people who will only use smooth. What kind do you folks use when you make peanut butter cookies?

Experiment: Dessert Calzones

Well, since there was so much interest in these I figured I should post about them next. Before we even get started though, I want to make one point: more experiments are clearly needed. While delicious, these things were a disaster. What I had envisioned were two-bite size calzones, full of sweet goodiness, easy to eat with your hands. What I got were sticky, exploded, two-bite size calzones and you needed to take a shower after eating them. They were tasty though. Details? Sure.

I made four different kinds, peanut butter and strawberry jam, peanut butter and chocolate and the same again but with marshmallow. I made them just like a regular calzone, only much smaller. Maybe three inches by five or so. I dolloped the peanut butter on and then the jam or chocolate and then, if it was getting it, half a large marshmallow. Then I sealed them up, with varying amounts of visual appeal. Brushed them with melted butter and sprinkled them with sugar. Then I baked them like regular calzones, 500 degrees on parchment (if they explode it doesn't get all over your stone). This is what the ones without marshmallow looked like. Sort of, sorry about the pic. I'm sure most of you see at least one problem here. The vent I cut in one of them was way too huge. This was part of my explosion issue. But even the one with smaller vents exploded. What is needed is something to hold up the dough so the filling doesn't ooze out. As you can see in this cross-section, the marshmallow did just this. and the chocolate and peanut butter stayed in. But the marshmallow itself oozed out and completely disappeared. I was thinking maybe chunks of brownie or some other dense cake would work, with some caramel and hot fudge in there. Or maybe nuts. Or even a whole strawberry or chunks of apple. I did make a calzone once that had apple pie filling in it, that worked out well. But like I said, more experiments. Any ideas, kids?

One pleasant surprise: the filling that oozed out turned into a crispy caramel/toffee kind of thing that was quite good.Who'd have guessed?

No Bake Nutter Butter Chocolate Bars

1 cup crushed Nutter Butters (about 10)
3/4 cup oats (regular, not quick oats)
3/4 cup melted chocolate (good eating chocolate)
2/3 cup powdered sugar
1 cup chunky peanut butter
4 tbls salted butter

Spray an 8x8 pan with cooking spray. Line with a strip of parchment paper that hangs a couple inches over two sides, forming a sling kind of... thing. Crush the cookies fairly fine and mix them together with the sugar and oats. Melt the butter over low heat in a small sauce pan, once it's melted add the peanut butter. Stir till melted and combined. Add to the sugar/oat mixture and mix to combine. Spread in an even layer in the pan. Refrigerate, covered, for 20 minutes. Melt the chocolate, pour it over the chilled peanut butter mixture and spread it evenly over the top. Return to the fridge and chill, covered, for at least a half hour. To cut it run a large chef's knife under hot water for a minute, dry it off and then cut the bars into squares, wiping the knife clean after each slice.

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First, a warning. Kids, these babies are rich. Like the Monopoly guy dipped in cheesecake rich. At first I was worried that I would eat the whole pan in an evening, but that isn't even a concern. And I'm known for my ability to eat way more sweets than is necessary. So, invite some friends over to share them with, have a glass of milk handy, but do make these. They are wicked good.

The other day it was 90 degrees here. In April. Way too hot to bake without a/c. But, I wanted to make something sweet. It's not a big shock that I picked peanuts and chocolate for the flavors, I think my proclivity for that combination is well known. So I scoured the 'nets, squished a bunch of no bake bar recipes together and came up with this. It takes a little bit of stove time, but it's nothing like having the oven on 350 for a half hour. Here's what I did.

First, cookies. I used Nutter Butters. Because they are awesome. These are the half box size kind that you can get in a certain kind of convenient store. It's the whole package of them. Well, most of a package, anyway. Heh. You could use any kind of cookie you wanted, I can't imagine any would be bad. Oreos, chocolate chip, even some kind of fruit jelly ones. It's not hard to find a match for peanut butter. Then I crushed them up and added the powdered sugar and oats. Mixed that together and set it aside. Then I melted butter. Sweet, sweet butter. Well, salty butter. I used regular salted butter so I wouldn't have to add salt. Pretty clever, eh? Once it was melted I added the peanut butter and stirred them around till they were combined in a peanuty buttery goo. Then I poured that into the dry ingredients. Mixed it together and spread it into the prepared pan. With lots of differences in lighting. Apparently. The pan had been prepared by spraying it with cooking spray and then lining it with a strip of parchment paper that hung over two sides a couple inches forming a kind of sling. And after that big run-on sentence I don't have any pics to show you what I meant. Hopefully you understood. I also couldn't spread the mixture with anything but my hands, it was just too thick. But it's also not rocket science so I spread it kind of evenly and tossed it in the fridge. After fifteen or so minutes I melted the chocolate. Now here's the thing about the chocolate for this, I'm not going to tell you what kind to use other than good eating chocolate. Want dark? Dark chocolate goes well with peanut butter. Milk? Sure, it's always tasty. White chocolate? If that's what you're into then go for it. All chocolate goes well with peanut butter. I'm pretty sure that's written somewhere. Anyway, I'm melting some milk chocolate since that's what Girlfriend likes. The stove isn't on yet and that chocolate was in air conditioning not too long before this. I hate the heat. Give me winter any day. But that's neither here nor there. I melted the chocolate and spread it onto the chilled peanut butter mixture then tossed it back into the fridge. Left it in for about a half hour then pulled it out. You could just hack at it with a carving knife or break it up like bark. If you are going for the rustic look. I wanted to be fancy so I ran my chef knife under hot water for a minute then wiped it dry. Then when I cut into it I got fairly neat lines and weird little melty chocolate edges at the top. And that's that. No bake peanut butter chocolate bars. Good times folks, good times.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Buttercream Frosting

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup chunky peanut butter
3 tablespoons milk, or as needed
2 cups confectioners' sugar
3/4 cup chopped chocolate chips

Cream the butter and peanut butter together. Add the sugar, mix to combine. Add the milk, a tablespoon at a time and mix till smooth and spreadable.

adapted from here

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Ok, here is how good this frosting is. See this? See the cake? The chocolate cake? Practically irrelevant. I wound up eating about a quarter cup of the frosting with a spoon while I was waiting for the cake to cool enough to be frosted. Then when I did frost it and eat some I barely even noticed it. It probably didn't help that it was a mix cake, but I like mix cakes. Sure, they aren't as good as a good homemade one, but it will satisfy a cake craving and it's easy. But this frosting. This was very good. It's full of chunks from the peanuts and chocolate, so it will never be smooth and pretty. But it tastes like some kind of wonderful, delicious... thing. Words fail me, apparently. Look, if you like peanut butter, butter and chocolate you will like this frosting. It's wicked good. Here's how you make it.


Chop up some chocolate chips. No need to worry too much about small pieces, big chunks of chocolate are always good. And I've found that nothing is going to make a chunky frosting spread well, so you might as well get good flavor. Plus if you are using an electric mixer it will break them down a bit more. I didn't feel like breaking out my electric, which probably wouldn't have been able to handle frosting anyway. It's really weak. But I didn't use the whisk pictured here either. I'm not sure why I thought I would. I also didn't feel like following the instructions, I just dumped in everything except the milk and chips into a bowl and mixed. Then added some milk to thin it out. Then chocolate chips and more mixing. When it was as smooth as I wanted, I called it done. Then, as you saw, I put it on cake and ate more. It would also be good between two peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies or chocolate oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Or just on a spoon. I think that was my favorite.