baking

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Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Bliss

May 17, 2011 in Food, recipe by traveleatlove | 21 comments

It’s very rare that I have a craving for anything sweet. If you have read this blog for any period of time, you know I would skip dessert for chips and salsa, and that I find most sweet things to be way too much. But lately, I have had peanut butter and chocolate on the brain, and this weekend I decided to do something about it.

peanut butter

I scanned lots of websites for brownie recipes and finally came across a recipe that was for peanut butter brownies, no chocolate involved. The recipe was perfect as I had all of the ingredients in the house already (subbing butter for margarine)

peanut butter blondies

The addition of peanut butter to the batter really gave it a thick, creamy texture, and it smelled amazing. I cut back on the sugar called for in the recipe just a bit to make room for semi-sweet chocolate chips. While the peanut butter would be great by itself some days, I needed my chocolate peanut butter fix!

peanut butter blondies

The end result was perfect. I always end up cooking things for less time than the recipe requires, and it usually works like a charm. I loved the texture of these, moist and buttery but with a bite here and there from the chocolate chips.

I would make a few changes to the recipe next time. I would add more peanut butter to enhance that peanut butter flavor even more, and I would leave out the vanilla. Even the tiniest bit of vanilla extract in a dessert seems to overwhelm me. That’s some strong stuff!

peanut butter chocolate blondies

These made a nice dessert and also a perfect pairing for a cup of tea on a rainy Monday morning. I am going to DC for Eat, Write, Retreat this weekend and despite the gloomy weather outside, am trying to keep upbeat. Spring has to be somewhere out there!

What is your favorite dessert combination? How are you dealing with our extended winter?

 

Peanut Butter Brownies

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup peanut butter
  • 1/3 cup margarine, softened
  • 2/3 cup white sugar
  • 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
  • 2 egg
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C ). Grease a 9×9 inch baking pan.
  2. In a medium bowl, cream together peanut butter and margarine. Gradually blend in the brown sugar, white sugar, eggs, and vanilla; mix until fluffy. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt; stir into the peanut butter mixture until well blended.
  3. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes in preheated oven, or until the top springs back when touched. Cool, and cut into 16 squares.

Tags: baking, chocolate, chocolate chips, dessert, peanut butter

Kerrygold Butter Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches

April 25, 2011 in Food, recipe by traveleatlove | 43 comments

This giveaway has ended. Thank you, Kerrygold for hosting!

And a giveaway! Happy Monday, everyone! I hope you had a great weekend. Thanks to those of you who submitted posts for Healthy Recipe Week. If you would like to submit a recipe to be posted, please send me the recipe text in an email with a photo attachment, and I will let you know what day your recipe will be posted.

How glorious was the weather yesterday?! I went for a run which was my first good run in forever, and I almost cried because the weather felt so nice. I spent the whole run thinking and looking back, it was a rough winter in many ways! I am ready to look ahead!

We didn’t do much for Easter, but I did bake a special dessert, butter cookies from a recipe from the Kerrygold USA website.

Kerrygold butter

The recipe was, of course, rich in Kerrygold butter. I was out of salted, so I used a mix of salted and unsalted.

Kerrygold butter

The recipe called for mixing the butter and sugar with a mixer. Since I don’t have one, we used every other tool in the kitchen to mash the butter and sugar together until fluffy. We are fancy bakers in my house, let me tell you!

butter cookie dough

Eventually, the dough came together into a nice, non-sticky ball which I refrigerated overnight to allow it to firm up enough to cut.

butter cookie dough

Once ready to bake, I rolled the dough into a somewhat even log and cut the cookies out.

butter cookie dough

18 minutes later in a 325 oven, and my not-so-round cookies were done. We’ll call them Easter egg shaped, shall we?

butter cookies

To make the sandwiches, I softened some raspberry sorbet from Trader Joe’s and stuffed it in between two buttery cookies.

raspberry sorbet

Isn’t it pretty? The crunchy, buttery cookies were a tiny bit too sweet for me, making just a small sandwich the perfect dessert. I love cookie sandwiches for the contrast between cool and warm, crunchy and creamy, and I loved that the color of the sorbet was so spring-like!

ice cream sandwich

ice cream sandwich

I am thinking that these will be a great dessert for Mother’s Day, which is just a couple of weeks away! Kerrygold has all sorts of great recipes on their website, and I am teaming up with Kerrygold to help you make one or more of their recipes for Mother’s Day or another spring occasion!

They are generously giving one reader a hamper containing a month of butter and cheese. I have made several Kerrygold converts, including my mom and sister, over the past few months, and once you try their butter and cheese, I think you will be in love too!

To enter:

1) Go to Kerrygold’s recipes, and let me know what recipe looks best to you in a comment.

2) Tweet “I want to win a month of @kerrygoldusa butter + cheese” with a link back to this post and follow @kerrygoldusa if you aren’t already. You’ll want to, they do lots of tweeting about butter and cheese! 🙂

3) If you have a blog, let your readers know with a link back to this post in your next post.

I will choose a winner on Friday morning, so please check back. Good luck!

Tags: baking, cookies, dessert, Food, giveaway, Kerrygold, Mother's Day, sorbet

Easy As Can Be Focaccia

April 1, 2011 in Food, recipe by traveleatlove | 8 comments

When I decided I wanted to make homemade focaccia, I knew it had to be an easy and quick recipe. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, this week has been insane, and while I am taking on more freelance projects, I do still want to make some great home cooked meals and to continue blogging twice a day.

After a little bit of googling, I found the Easiest Focaccia Recipe on Allrecipes.com.

easiest focaccia recipe

You’ll note the tab for Bodyrocks TV on the bottom of the image. If you want to feel badly about yourself, this is a good place to start. I clicked the site away and made bread instead.

This bread only has a few ingredients, flour, sugar, water, yeast, oil, and salt.

focaccia ingredients

I followed the recipe and started by mixing the yeast and sugar with some warm water. Bubble bubble. I love the smell of yeast. It reminds me of bread and Champagne. Smile

yeast and sugar

Getting the dough together was very easy. I just added the flour to the yeast mixture, then slowly mixed and added water in until it became dough.

focaccia dough

Them I set it on top of my heating oven to rise, a trick I started using this winter when my house didn’t seem warm enough for dough to rise. Thirty minutes later, my dough looked like it was on its way to being bread. I stretched it out, coated it in a little olive oil and salt, and set it to bake at 475 for about 15 minutes.

focaccia

It came out nice and golden brown, chewy on the outside and soft on the inside. This bread would make a nice base for a thick crust pizza. And it was a fantastic sandwich bread.

focaccia

What is your favorite sandwich?

Easiest Focaccia, adapted from Allrecipes.com

Ingredients
  • 1 teaspoon white sugar
  • 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
  • 1/3 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
Directions
  1. In a small bowl, dissolve sugar and yeast in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
  2. In a large bowl, combine the yeast mixture with flour; stir well to combine. Stir in additional water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until all of the flour is absorbed. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead briefly for about 1 minute.
  3. Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 30 minutes.
  4. Preheat oven to 475 degrees F (245 degrees C).
  5. Deflate the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface; knead briefly. Pat or roll the dough into a sheet and place on a lightly greased baking sheet. Brush the dough with oil and sprinkle with salt.
  6. Bake focaccia in preheated oven for 10 to 20 minutes, depending on desired crispness. If you like it moist and fluffy, then you’ll have to wait just about 10 minutes. If you like it crunchier and darker in the outside, you may have to wait 20 minutes.

Tags: baking, bread, easy recipe, focaccia, recipe, sandwich bread

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