Peanut Butter Pie

I wanted peanut butter this week. Jackson eats it every day with Ritz or mini clubs, but I hardly ever eat the stuff. The problem: it get stuff to the roof of your mouth, make you chug a gallon of water, and just isn't that good. Unless it's paired with CHOCOLATE. Duh, I love chocolate, we've established this. But I don't know if I've told you my obsession with chocolate and peanut butter. Those two ingredients combine and equal heaven. Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups = amazing. Seriously, try them. I'm planning on making some chocolate cupcakes and popping those babies in each one before they bake. But that's for another day.

One step closer

This Monday I completed my practical for my first pastry class, Principles of Baking. I had 4 hours to make 5 dishes: Lemon Chiffon Cake, Orange-Cranberry Scones, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Focaccia, and Palmiers. I was certain that I wouldn't have enough time to complete everything and was unbelievably nervous the night before.

I had made a timeline of when I should start making the recipes, when I should put them in the oven and when I should take them out. My timeline gave me 5 minutes to clean up at the very end, so I was FREAKING out. Cleanliness was a big part of the evaluation and I will admit that I'm not the neatest baker. Flour is flying around me a lot of the time. So when I went into the kitchen Monday morning I had pretty much given up on being able to finish all five dishes. But then we started....

Another Birthday Cake

Last week I had an order for not one, but TWO birthday cakes. They were both chocolate cakes with an assortment of chocolate buttercreams and frostings layered in. It was for one of my dad's friends, so I knew it had to look good. As I've mentioned before, I'm not really a decorator. I can use a star tip, but that's about it. So when the guy first emailed me and asked for a regular cake I said 'no problem.' Then he asked for a second cake and I said 'sure, that's easy.' Then he asked that one cake say 'Happy Birthday Momma' and one say 'Happy Birthday Joan Mary' and I said 'that's a piece of cake.' When really I was terrified of having to pipe anything, let alone pretty letters onto two cakes. I've never practiced piping in cursive or working with different frostings to see which one pipes best. But that was what the customer wanted and I was going get it done.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've been making a hell of a lot of cakes lately, so this weekend I was looking for something easy. I browsed my normal foodblogs and found a recipe for m & m cookies on How Sweet. I don't usually make cookies, I don't really know why, I mean they come together so quickly and you get almost immediate satisfaction depending on how long you are willing to wait for them to cool. :) But these looked so good and the recipe seemed relatively simple. It was almost as if those tiny little candy coated chocolates were speaking to me saying, "make me, eat me, LOVE me". Sadly, I didn't have any m & m's in the house, or mini peanut butter cups, or any good candy for that matter (note to self: pick up candy to snack on). So I made the traditional chocolate chip cookies from leftover chips I had from other recipes. The reason I liked the cookie is because of the chewiness, my grandma makes her cookies with crisco and they are always too crisp for me. These cookies stayed soft for the few days that they lasted. I made the them extra-large and figured they'd be perfect for sandwiching some homemade ice cream, which I happened to make in my class on Monday! Now all I need is a really good scale so I can measure out the ingredients and make it at home.

Peach & Blueberry Cobbler

So in my last post I mentioned how my family is addicted to chocolate and how I can never pass up a recipe involving the decadent ingredient. Well, I could see my dad was getting kind of tired of the rich, chocolatey goodness (i know, CRAZY). So I decided that I would make him a cobbler, one of his favorite desserts. He had just gone down to North Carolina and on the way home he stopped by a fruit stand and picked up a massive amount of peaches. Needless to say we've been making a lot of recipes with peaches, including a peach salsa recipe that I'll have to share later. There were also some blueberries left in the fridge from a previous recipe so I figured I'd throw it all into these cute little ramekins and bake it up.

Peach Blueberry Cobbler


4 large peaches, peeled and sliced
1 cup blueberries
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
pinch of salt
1 Tbsp cornstarch

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 Tbsp light brown sugar
4 oz cold butter, cubed
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Mix filling ingredients together and divide into 4 ramekins. Bake for 20 minutes.

2. While filling is baking put together the biscuit dough together. Mix the flour, baking powder, brown sugar, and salt together. Cut butter into flour mixture with pastry cutter until it reaches the cornmeal consistency.

3. Pour in buttermilk and vanilla, and mix until just combined. Refrigerate until ready to use.

4. Take the ramekins out of the oven and scoop some biscuit dough onto the top of each. Smooth it out a little and place the ramekins back in the oven to bake for 30 minutes or until the tops are brown.

5. Allow to cool slightly before serving...with ice cream!

Chocolate Hazelnut Cake

Everyone in my family, except for my dad is a chocoholic. Sadly there are no meetings for people addicted to such a hard drug so we just continue to binge on anything chocolate, including Nutella.

Now, look at that cake. Would you turn down this cake? Yeah, I didn't think so. When I saw it on Tasty Kitchen I couldn't say no either. This cake is unbelievably moist and has now replaced my jazzed up box mix as my favorite chocolate recipe. For the frosting I took Martha Stewart's Dark Chocolate Frosting recipe and replaced the melted chocolate with Nutella, which worked perfectly. Chopped hazelnuts are the finishing touch to this super decadent dessert. Try it, although I'm warning you now, it may make you crave chocolate day and night*.

*Disregard that last note if you have day and night chocolate cravings already.

Buttermilk Pound Cake

This 4th of July weekend was AMAZING, mainly because of the crazy amounts of food that I consumed, but also because I was able to spend some special time with my mom and son. We went to the pool and Jackson finally got used to the water (there may or may not have been a traumatic head-under-water incident early this summer...). We also traveled down to our local outlet mall  and the trip wouldn't have been complete without a refueling at Pierce's BBQ. If you haven't been there you need to go. The decor may make you want to run away screaming, but their bbq is killer and their crinkle cut fries are worth having to sit in mustard yellow booths. But the best part of the weekend was the awesome grilling that took place in our own backyard.