Week 7 - Chocolate Peanut Butter Hearts

In honor of Valentine's Day, I made my husband a homemade treat of Chocolate Peanut Butter Hearts found on....Pinterest, of course! :)  The pin led me to the blog Hungry Happenings (http://www.hungryhappenings.com/). 

My husband is a HUGE fan of Reese's Peanut Butter cups, so instead of buying him some from the store, I decided to try this recipe that I found.  While mine didn't end up quite as pretty as the ones on the blog, they were still cute and very tasty!!

I started out making the peanut butter concoction first.  I poured the bag of white chips (I used Hershey's Premium White) and the Reese's Peanut Butter chips into a large microwaveable bowl and heated per directions.  (45 seconds - stir, 30 seconds - stir, 25 seconds - let sit for 2 minutes then stir).  Mine required another 10 seconds after that to fully melt all the chips.  I stirred in the salt then the 2 cups of peanut butter.  I used crunchy peanut butter for two reasons - 1) My husband prefers crunchy peanut butter over creamy and 2) I forgot to get creamy at the store and all we had was crunchy in the house. :)  I was not running back to the store in the middle of making this, so crunchy peanut butter it was!  It actually turned out great!!

I laid out a layer of foil on a large cookie sheet then put some heart shaped cookie cutters on top.  Using a ladle I poured the peanut butter mixture into the cookie cutters.  I filled them about 3/4 full, maybe a little more.  I then put them in the freezer for a couple hours so I could run out to my son's school Valentine's Day party and pick up my daughter from preschool. 

When I got back, the hearts were frozen through and popped out of the cookie cutters easily.  I then made the chocolate ganache (yummy!) by heating up the heavy whipping cream (1 cup) until almost boiling then stirring it into the bowl where I had poured the bag semi-sweet chocolate chips.  I whisked this until smooth then used another ladle to pour and smooth the chocolate over the hearts.  I returned them to the freezer to harden up the chocolate before dinner. 

My husband loved his surprise, and I took one of the larger hearts of the freezer, so it could thaw while we ate dinner.  We shared a portion for dessert, and it was delicious!  Today I had one of the smaller hearts just out of the freezer, and that was pretty yummy too!  It had a little more crispness, where last night, being thawed, it was more gooey.  Might just have to keep some in the freezer and some in the fridge!

One of the bonuses was there was enough chocolate ganache left over for the kids to dip strawberries for their dessert that night!

I would definitely recommend this one to try.  It's neat that you can make it for whatever, holiday, or just because! :)

Week 4 - Part 1 - Fudge Peanut Butter Cookies

This is kind of a bonus post b/c I found this recipe just searching for something to do with the left over cocoa I didn't use in the teacher gifts at Christmas.  My daughter wanted to do some cooking this morning, so we found these cookies on a blog I found looking up recipes for cocoa powder. 

http://madeitallfromscratch.blogspot.com/2009/05/chocolate-fudge-cookies.html

You can find the recipe by clicking on the link above.

I have been doing more cooking from scratch myself here lately, and it really not that much harder than using a mix, and I think it tastes much better!  Plus, while I don't use all organic ingredients, I do feel  little better knowing that organic flour and butter are going into it. 

My daughter insisted that we wear our Christmas aprons since we would be baking.  I think I need to get some anytime aprons, although she looks really cute in her gingerbread man apron. :)  We started to work measuring, pouring and mixing.  I did most of the measuring, and my daughter enjoyed dumping the ingredients into the bowl and mixing them together.  She has gotten pretty good with the pastry blender.  I hardly to to help her with it anymore.  She also "helped" me hold the mixer when we put together the dry and wet ingredients.  We ended up adding peanut butter chips to it instead of chocolate.  We did this for my husband b/c he is a big Reese's fan.

After getting it all mixed together, I used my melon baller to scoop the cookies out.  I love doing this b/c it makes the perfect size cookie, and it scrapes itself.  Easy!!!

After about 13 minutes in the oven and 5 minutes to cool, we tasted our final product (pictured at the top).  Delicious!!  We both enjoyed just one, but I have a feeling a few more may be eaten by the end of the day.  Super easy, and a great one for the kids to help with.  I ended pinning the blog above the pinterest myself.

I will be doing another post this week about one of my pins on pinterest. :)