Peanut butter butterscotch scotcheroos

I liked the sound of this recipe, so felt I just had to investigate further.  I had been lucky enough to receive some Hershey's Butterscotch Chips as a gift from a pupil who had been on holiday to Florida over the summer, and was keen to try them out.

This recipe is a no-bake one, and is basically rice crispy treats with added melted peanut butter and then a layer of the melted butterscotch chips on top.

It sounds a bit crazy with all those flavours, but it was so easy to eat!  We chopped it into bite-size pieces, then managed to bite our way through the entire tin in just a few days.  The Team could probably make a dessert like this themselves, with minimal supervision, so this is going into the must-bake-again folder.  

Peanut butter and chocolate - a match made in traybake heaven

I subscribe to quite a few email lists from bakers - whether it be blog posts or email newsletters.  I love reading and saving or printing out the recipes and ideas for future inpsiration.  One such recipe was this from Betty Crocker, that great American powerhouse of ideas, for Chewy Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars.  I mean, that just sounds good right there, doesn't it?!!

And with a starting out photo that looks this good, you know it's gonna taste amazing!  Mmmm...

It was a pretty easy recipe to convert to metric measurements (I really don't like American cup measurements, they're too imprecise for my scientific mind to handle) and to get to this stage.  They asked you to sprinkle chocolate chips over the just-out-of-the-oven traybake.  You can see in the photo that a few have started to melt within moments of touching the warm peanut butter choc studded base...

Then a few moments later you had to use a palette knife or similar to smooth out the melted chocolate and quickly add the chopped peanuts, so they'd stick well.

I left it out on the kitchen counter to cool, and realised after a little while that it would never set hard at room temperature.  So I cut it into 'bars', which in my case were more like bite-sized squares, then popped it in the fridge for a while.

And got this as the end result.  Oh my, peanut butter heaven!!  This tasted so good, and was so quick and easy to make.  And only about 1000kcal per bite-size of luscious dessert.  You have to try this - let me know how you get on!  Enjoy.

Have eggs, will bake...

Every now and then I get to the stage where we've either run out of some particular foodstuff and need to go shopping, or have a glut of a foodstuff and need to use them up quickly before they go out of date.  Past excesses have included, but are not limited to, Maltesers, Crunchie bars, cucumbers (that was a weird one) and so on.  Today's glut was eggs.  My first thought was to make an omlette for the kids for dinner.  Then I came to my senses and remembered that I also had some Reese's Mini Peanut Butter cups to use up.  Fortuitous, no?

The recipe I use calls for cocoa and chopped chocolate, so sometimes I add in different things in place of the chocolate.  Today, I thought I'd try some peanut butter and chopped Reese's.  Another time I'd used white chocolate chips, or Reese's pieces and so on.  (I really should link here to those previous posts, but sadly I can't find them).

As with the Oreo cookie brownies from a few weeks ago, I left some of the pieces out so I could scatter them across the top, thus making sure that each brownie had some filling.

I think some of the chopped mini cups must have melted, because it doesn't look like there was so much throughout the brownie once baked, hmmm...

I'll wait till the girls get home from school, and we'll all try some then.  Then we'll know how much of a peanut butter taste runs through these delicious chocolatey treats, mmm...

Reese's Peanut Butter Cup cake, oh my!

I had seen a photo of this cake and fallen in love.  But seriously, chocolate cake, peanut butter icing and chocolate ganache - when are you gonna eat a cake like that??  And no-one was likely to order one, because they wouldn't know that I wanted to bake it.  So...  I had to wait for just the right occasion.  Which came during the just-ended October school holidays. 

A good friend of mine L (we met first in the post-delivery labour ward, our girls are twins-from-other-mothers), whom we don't see often enough, invited us over to play.  They'd been over to play at our place during the holiday-week before and I'd only noticed that it was her birthday in the weekend between playdates late the night before they were coming to us, and really didn't feel like baking something then.  Wrote a card, but no baking.

Then inspiration hit when she mentioned that she was going to do a peanut choc traybake for her family party at the weekend - Eureka!!  I could make this cake for our playdate, woo hoo.  I thought to make it in my new 6" tin (partly because it's less cake to eat and partly because it's kinda cute and still a novelty for me).  After checking with a mutual friend J (who was also coming to the playdate) that her peanut-allergic girls could be near the cake as long as they didn't touch it, I went ahead.

I had found these beauties recently at a nearby supermarket and had to buy them, knowing that at some point soon I wanted to need them...

I had looked up few different recipes for a peanut butter cup cake, then realised I could just muddle through it myself.  I had a chocolate fudge cake recipe that I wanted to try, so used that as the base.  Then made my usual vanilla buttercream but instead of adding vanilla I kept adding tablespoons of peanut butter until I thought the taste was strong enough.  First I used up all our smooth peanut butter, then onto the crunchy stuff.  After that I made chocolate ganache using 120ml of double cream and 120g of dark chocolate (with a bit of milk mixed in so it would be sweet enough for Mr Becca to taste some).  As you may agree, that was a bit too much ganache, as it dribbled all down the sides and pooled at the base.  But I still think it looked good, and more importantly, so did the birthday girl and everyone who saw it.

And the best bit?  It tasted amazing!!!  Rich, decadent and more-ish, yummy.

Peanut butter M&M cookies for Felix

We're off to see our friend Felix tomorrow, and his mum is offering lunch with our playdate.  I offered to bring something, and she suggested dessert.  Not a problem!

We haven't been shopping since the weekend before last, as we found many years ago that shopping weekly worked for us, and have a list on the fridge for additions throughout the week.  So with regard to what to bake and bring, it necessitated a quick scour of the ingredients and dredge of the memory to figure it out.  And cookies won!

The recipe is scribbled on a torn back of orange envelope and stuck into a blue book - seriously.  My friend Catherine copied it out of her Guardian weekend supplement many years ago, once we'd successfully made it with our then just-turned-two year old Mini-1's.  It's a quick, easy and basic recipe using flour, baking powder, two sugars, a bit of butter and roughly 100g of 'extras' - in this evening's case they were M&M's and a spoonful of crunchy peanut butter.  Other times they've been chopped apricots, oats, choc chips, lemon zest etc etc.

I had checked with the girls earlier in the day to see if they wanted to help make them, but both said no, because they didn't want to share them!  Not very charitable at all, and not the way we'd like them to think.  Suffice it to say, I started baking once they were in bed/asleep.

And a mere hour later (most of which time was taken up with 4-5 batches at 9 minutes each) we have the delight that is nearly 4 dozen small coloured-dot-studded cookies - yummy!

Hummingbird Peanut Butter Cookies

We had some time to spare today, so took a group decision to bake something for our friends visiting tomorrow.  Mini 1 wanted to do nothing, because she believes we share too much and there's never enough for her to have thirds and fourths.  Mini 2 suggested 'muffins, because we haven't done them in ages' but I pointed out that we hadn't done biscuits in ages either, and so took an Executive Decision.  Biscuits it was.

Off to find the recipe that one of our Facebook fans mentioned, from the first Hummingbird book.  It seemed quick and easy, which is always a bonus with young children (for those of you without some of your own, they have a short attention span).  We weighed out and mixed up the ingredients and put in a bit extra of chocolate chips (our pack had 100g and the recipe only required 75g, but I felt that the kids really didn't need to eat a full 25g of chocolate, hence the addition to the mix).  The recipe stated it would make 24, but I didn't want the cookies to be too large.  As it turned out, they were a good size and we got 60!!!

So enough for all the children, plus plenty extra for the Mum's to enjoy with a mug of coffee...

or a cup of tea, ha ha

We live in London baby!

Well, technically we haven't lived in London for about 15 years now, but I do so love a bit of Roy Ayers.  I went down alone (I tell you, I felt naked without the rest of Team Becca by my side) very early on Saturday  morning, to visit an old friend from NYC who was in London for a few days, for about 24 hours (returning to central Scotland by the afternoon on Sunday).  While there, we stopped by the Primrose Bakery .  I bought a Peanut Butter cupcake, which was really tasty.  Plenty of peanut taste and actual Reese's peanut butter drops as the decoration, so cute!  Here's a cheesy photo of me outside said bakery, though not actually eating the cupcake.

After visiting Tavistock St, Covent Garden and the afore-mentioned bakery, it was a short walk to Wardour St in Soho and the Hummingbird Bakery .  Again, here's a cheesy pic of me outside this bakery and from these guys I chose a Black Bottomed and a Saturday-special Mango cupcake.  Both were really really good, moist flavoursome sponge and smooth tasty icing.  I don't actually have the Hummingbird cook book (either of them), but have downloaded some recipes off t'internet.  And have now downloaded this Black Bottomed one, as it was sooooo chocolately.  Shall attempt it soon myself, and will, of course, let you know how I got on.