Peanut butter | Just About Baked

Peanut Butter Cup Cake

My birthday is this coming Friday, y’all. Feel free to send gifts. Or chocolate. Heck, I’ll take an e-card. Or nothing. It’s not that big a deal.

Every year, I bake my own birthday fantasy treat. When you’re the resident cake baker, nobody bakes them for you. It falls to me to make the festive sugar. But that’s okay, because I get to let my imagination run wild.

This cake is like a giant Reese’s peanut butter cup. A peanut butter core is sandwiched between my favorite chocolate cake (it’s gluten-free but superior to any chocolate cake I’ve ever baked, and that’s a LOT of cakes) and then frosted with peanut butter frosting. And of course, the whole cake is topped off with more Reese’s peanut butter cups. It’s the best candy in the world, my friends!

Fluffernutter Blondies

August 4, 2015
Mir
Bars n' Brownies
28 Comments

I read this really fascinating article the other day about why time seems to speed up as we get older. It’s actually a wonderfully simple explanation of this common phenomenon, and it turns out that we’re not all going crazy.

Time does speed up as we age. See, when we’re little, a month seems like forever because our lives have been pretty short. A six year-old will spend what seems like decades waiting for her birthday because, relatively speaking, a year is a huge percentage of her life. That’s not at all true for a thirty-six year old, for whom a year is a much smaller percentage of life. And by the time anyone reaches much older age, time whizzes by because the majority of years spent alive vs. any time increment is much larger.

Do I sound like a total nerd here? You caught me. I am a nerd about a lot of things, like Shakespeare, Star Trek, and getting older. Getting older scares me, and the faster time goes, the more my existential dread rears its ugly head. But since I’m also a baking nerd, I can use my prowess in the kitchen to provide some much-needed distraction from time’s unyielding march onward.

The Best Vegan, Gluten-Free PB Cookies

July 30, 2015
Mir
C is for COOKIE!, Gluten-Free Goodness, Healthier Indulgences
20 Comments

I’ve got to post something kind of healthy. It’s been candy bars and cola all week long. Consider this recipe equally delicious, but a little less crazy than black cherry cola cake and Baby Ruth brookies.

Of course, it’s a peanut butter recipe. I have a rule when it comes to gluten-free baking: chocolate or peanut butter (or both) has to make an appearance. I don’t know about you, but I still haven’t mastered the GF yellow cake. It’s on my baking bucket list, but as yet, no progress. I’ll keep working on it.

Chocolate and peanut butter are both strong flavors, and they work well with my favorite of all gluten-free flours: oat flour. It has to be certified GF, by the way. Just remember that. I wouldn’t put oat flour in more delicately-flavored desserts, but in peanut butter cookies? Fo sho. For an added bonus, these puppies just happen to be vegan. Eat that, all y’all!

PB & J Bars

I’ve never gotten over a simple PB & J. I mean, how can you top that?

With a bar, actually. That’s how you top the best sandwich ever. This bar is soft and chewy and topped with strawberry jelly. Oh, and peanut butter chips. Can you imagine what would have happened if your mother had put peanut butter chips in your sandwich when you were a kid? That’s known as “bad parenting.” But it works really well in a dessert bar!

Too well, actually. These guys got banished to the freezer so I wouldn’t slam back the entire batch in one day. It makes me wonder why I didn’t name my blog after all things peanut butter. If you must know, I like to rename my blog in my head. But I still really like Just About Baked.

Salted PB Caramel Ganache Pie

I have no idea what to call this pie. Other than life-changing, that is.

The idea of making a pie crust used to terrify me. I knew that it involved a food processor, which I owned, but couldn’t put together. Seriously. The directions were so confusing. But then, I found a way around it for an easy crust you can make in a bowl. More details on that later.

By the way, I know how to use my food processor now. But whatever. What makes this pie so amazing is peanut butter caramel. Salted peanut butter caramel. Yes, that exists. And it’s easy to make!

Sea Salt Peanut Butter Cookie Chips Ice Cream

May 31, 2015
Mir
C is for COOKIE!, We Scream for Ice Cream!
32 Comments

If you’ve been following Just About Baked for any length of time, you know that I love the food. All the food. And the food products. My life is one happy trip to the grocery store to find new things.

A couple of years back, I was in the bakery section of my local Safeway (not an unusual place to find me) when I spotted Hannah Max Cookie Chips on the shelf. They had several flavors, and I picked up the chocolate chip, not knowing what to expect.

What I got was a crispy cookie that tasted absolutely homemade. And they were so good that Kenny (these were the days prior to his gluten-free lifestyle) ate the entire bag. And when I bought more, I was wise enough to hide them.

Mega Peanut Butter Cup Cookie

Big cookies are better than regular-sized cookies. But mega cookies are the BEST.

I can’t think of anything more tempting than a giant cookie. They always look so good in bakeries, like the antidote to a gloomy day or a sleepless night. Or both.

Back in high school, I had a bit of a dirty secret. You see, my parents never packed me lunch. I guess they trusted me to do it myself, just like they trusted me to change the sheets on my bed or do homework instead of watching reruns of Family Matters. Sorry, but I still think Urkel is kind of hilarious.

Stuffed Peanut Butter Rolls

If you are not a fan of stuffing awesome food into more awesome food, this post is definitely not for you.

For the rest of you (a.k.a. America), welcome! Today your peanut butter will be served in the middle of a light fluffy roll. With a Hershey bar piece on top. Why? I don’t know. It just seemed like a good idea at the time!

You know what also seems like a good idea? Digital downtime. You know, spending time away from the phones and iPads (I love you, iPad, don’t listen to me right now) and social media. But maybe that’s just because I’m afraid of social media.

Peanut Butter Crumb Bars

April 17, 2015
Mir
Bars n' Brownies
28 Comments

So, confession time.

If I didn’t care at all about what people want to see me bake, I’d probably make nearly every recipe on this blog related to peanut butter somehow. It is my love, and I want to honor that. But, you know, it’s not all about me. I get that. So I’ve been trying to hold it down a little, until today.

Because, because, because. Ready? CRUMBS. On peanut butter bars!

Salted Chocolate Peanut Butter Eggs

Do you ever go overboard and then regret it?

Of course you do. We all do. It’s part of being human. And unfortunately, a necessary side effect of eating Chinese takeout.

Yesterday, Kenny happened to be near my favorite Chinese restaurant, so we got takeout. That’s pretty rare, since I cook my family dinner almost every night. I got way too excited and ordered much more food than I could actually eat without feeling totally sick in the morning. And sure enough, I think I went one or two pieces of sesame chicken too far.