peanut butter Archives | The Vanilla Bean Blog

Layered Peanut Butter Crunch Brownies

Sarah Kieffer — Sun, 05 Feb 2023 14:22:17 +0000

These decadent Peanut Butter Crunch Brownies come from my 100 Cookies cookbook, and I couldn’t resist baking them in the shape of a heart for Valentine’s Day. Peanut butter and chocolate go together like eggs and bacon, macaroni and cheese, coffee and doughnuts; maybe even Romeo and Juliet. It’s a favorite combination, and the perfect way to celebrate any holiday. The layers are comprised of My Favorite Brownie recipe as the base, a creamy peanut butter filling with cacoa nibs for crunch, and a smooth, glossy chocolate ganache. The cacao nibs add both a bitter note that offsets the sweetness and richness of the chocolate and peanut butter, and a much-needed crunch. My favorite brownies have a deep chocolate flavor, slightly chewy texture (a nod to the boxed brownies of my youth), and beautiful shiny top. Each bite has the best brownie elements – chewy, fudgy, and chocolate heaven. They also make a great Marshmallow Swirl Brownie. How to Make Layered Peanut Butter Brownies: More Brownie Recipes:

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Perfectly Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies

Sarah Kieffer — Sat, 21 May 2022 20:07:31 +0000

In between finishing my manuscript and photos for my next cookbook, I’ve made several batches of these amazing peanut butter cookies from Snackable Bakes, the new cookbook from Jessie Sheehan. Jessie’s cookies are perfectly peanut buttery, with crisp edges and a tender, chewy center. They remind me of a peanut butter cookie you’d expect from a bakery, yet they’re easy to make at home. Using shortening in cookie recipes: You’ll notice the recipe calls for shortening, such as Crisco. It’s an important ingredient because it really helps the cookies keep their shape, and I’m guessing adds to those beautiful cracks on the surface. What makes peanut butter cookies chewy? This recipe is different from an old fashioned crisp, peanut butter cookie in that granulated sugar makes the edges crisp, while a high percentage of brown sugar makes for a chewy center. I wouldn’t recommend adjusting the sugar amounts called for, as they are an important piece of the texture of the cookie. Double salting makes peanut butter cookies better. Peanut butter and salt are the perfect marriage, and by using salt in the dough and flaky salt on the top, the peanut butter flavor is deepened even further. Can you […]

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Peanut Butter Chocolate Tart

Sarah Kieffer — Sat, 19 Sep 2020 09:35:00 +0000

Edd Kimber’s latest cookbook, One Tin Bakes, is a wonderful book that reduces the required bakeware to just one tin; each and every recipe in the book is baked in a 9 x13 inch baking pan. I am really enjoying this book, and have so many things in it on my baking wish list: Raspberry and Rose Cheesecake Buns, Whisky and Rye Peach Pie, Brown Butter Apricot Crumble Bars, and Raspberry Cheesecake Streusel Squares (which you can find on ZoëBakes), just to name a few. Edd’s preferred tin is this Nordic Ware pan, which I have and love, and use constantly. Notes from the author on this Peanut Butter Chocolate Tart: While I love pastry, sometimes I don’t have the patience or time to make it, so in those times, I turn to cookie crusts – tart cases made with a mixture of cookie crumbs and butter. They’re incredibly quick and simple to throw together, but they do have one down side: they’re not the easies to remove from the tin, so they’re best served in the tin. My way around this is to mix in an egg white, which acts like glue, holding down all of the ingredients together. […]

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Peanut Butter Marshmallow Swirl Brownies

Sarah Kieffer — Tue, 15 Sep 2020 03:38:00 +0000

Marshmallow Fluff + Peanut Butter + Brownies = Yes, please. And you don’t need any kind of mixer to make these – just a bowl and a whisk! They’re a combination of rich and chewy, chocolatey brownies with marshmallow fluff and a peanut butter filling swirled throughout the top. I have a recipe for peanut butter cups in my Baking for the Holidays cookbook that I love to make, and I realized the filling would probably also taste incredible swirled into chocolate brownies. It did. I then decided to take things one step further and twirl in some marshmallow cream! Notes: This recipe is a variation on My Favorite Brownies recipe, and appears in my 100 Cookies cookbook. This version I actually prefer the day after they’re made, as the marshmallow fluff softens and the chocolate flavor intensifies. More Brownie Recipes:

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Peanut Butter Brownies With Candied Cacao Nibs

Sarah Kieffer — Tue, 22 May 2018 02:54:37 +0000

The river that runs in the valley makes the valley that holds it. This is the doorway; the valley of the river. – What wears away the hard stone, the high mountain? The wind. The dust on the wind. The rain. The rain on the wind. What wears the hardness of hate away? Breath, tears. – Courage, compassion, patience holding to their way: the path to the doorway. -Ursula K. Le Guin, A Meditation I’ve been reading quite a bit of Ursula K. Le Guin lately — I’ve found her essays and poems to be much needed as of late. I highly recommend Late In The Day: Poems (affiliate link), and Words Are My Matter (affiliate link). If you live in Minneapolis, come join me and Radio Cherry Bombe at The Lynhall on the future of food tour! Kerry Diamond will moderate the panel, which will be recorded for a future episode of their podcast, talking about what’s next in the food world. I’ll be speaking, along with Pakou Hang, Jamie Malone, and Lachelle Cunningham. You can buy tickets here! And, the brownies. This is my favorite brownie recipe, taken to the next level with a peanut butter and candied cacao nib swirl. Candied cacao […]

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Chocolate Chip Mini Cakes With Peanut Butter Buttercream

Sarah Kieffer — Sun, 26 Mar 2017 15:00:13 +0000

“Who I am is certainly part of how I look and vice versa. I want to know where I begin and end, what size I am, and what suits me… I am not “in” this body, I am this body. Waist or no waist. But all the same, there’s something about me that doesn’t change, hasn’t changed, through all the remarkable, exciting, alarming, and disappointing transformations my body has gone through. There is a person there who isn’t only what she looks like, and to find her and know her I have to look through, look in, look deep. Not only in space, but in time. There’s the ideal beauty of youth and health, which never really changes, and is always true. There’s the ideal beauty of movie stars and advertising models, the beauty-game ideal, which changes its rules all the time and from place to place, and is never entirely true. And there’s an ideal beauty that is harder to define or understand, because it occurs not just in the body but where the body and the spirit meet and define each other.” -Ursula K. Le Guin on Aging and What Beauty Really Means (you can read more on […]

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peanut butter granola with cacao nibs and bittersweet chocolate

Sarah Kieffer — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 08:00:19 +0000

It snows in here. It snows forever, but there’s no Christmas underneath this weather. When it blows here and gets real cold, I wanna trip myself and fall upon your fabulous sword and move here by the stained-glass window. Forget about the inside ghetto. Down here on the hardwood floor, the lines on the ceiling start to swim once more like a cheap Renoir, a fake Van Gogh, a pop Monet, a blue Degas. I breathe you. I need you. -Over The Rhine, Jack’s Valentine I’ve had those lyrics running through my head since January; always winter, never Christmas* has sort of become my theme song this year. I apologize if I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but when your days consist of shivering, coughing, and cleaning up after sick peeps, you start to view the world through crazy eyes. And wake up every morning craving coffee. And chocolate cake. Although, I’ve discovered, eating cake for breakfast doesn’t really make my day any better, in fact, all that butter and sugar first thing can make it rather worse. So that’s when I came up with this breakfast bowl: peanut butter granola with cacao nibs and chocolate. Just a […]

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[baked] banana doughnuts [with coffee-cacao nib or peanut butter glaze]

Sarah Kieffer — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 03:15:00 +0000

I don’t know if this is the place for it, but I have to come out and say that I am still terribly upset about how this season of Downton Abbey ended. And yes, I had no idea it was coming, and yes, as [A] has pointed out to me several times it is just a TV show, but I’m still moping around. This has caused me to stay up way too late and do all sorts of reading about the show, where I found interesting articles about why this outcome is better for everyone and why it’s not the writer’s fault and whatnot. And then of course I’ve spent time chiding myself for caring so much about people who aren’t even real in the first place, and analyzing why books and shows have this kind of power over my emotions. But, of course, I’ll get over it. And all that lamenting and internet-surfing did actually pay off, as I came across a little interview with Julian Fellowes, who single handedly writes every episode of Downton. He was asked that lovely little question what advice can you give new writers? and his answer spoke to me on several levels. I’m […]

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