Lesson #50: Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

I've never thought of making peanut butter cups before. The homemade version of this popular candy is surprisingly easy to make. Trust me, you will impress your friends if you whip up these easy chocolates! I definitely impressed myself and was pretty excited by the finished product.

I would suggest using the best quality chocolate you can. It does makes a difference since there are very few ingredients in the recipe. The peanut butter filling is AWESOME! The peanut butter is melted with a bit of butter, boiled for a few minutes with brown sugar, and sweetened with powdered sugar.

LESSON LEARNED: Making homemade candies is fun!

Recipe for Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

Lesson #49: Flaky Cream-Filled Cookies

I love collecting random cookie cutters.  As much as I love holiday cookie cutters, I really only use them once a year. So, I was SUPER excited to make Thanksgiving themed cookies. :)

The dough is a cream cheese baked pie crust which I cut out using small turkey cookie cutters. Inside the cookies are is a marshmallow fluff filling. The cookies bake up LIGHT & FLUFFY and the cream cheese adds just a touch of tangy flavor. Marshmallow fluff is whipped with butter and powdered sugar to create a sweet filling. Because I used a small cookie cutter, these took hardly any time to bake and were a perfect snack-sized cookie.

LESSON LEARNED: I only use turkey cookie cutters once a year!

Recipe for Flaky Cream-Filled Cookies

Lesson #48: Fudge Cupcakes with Milk Chocolate Ganache

Yes, these cupcakes contain dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and cocoa powder and are GUARANTEED to satisfy your chocolate craving! I made them last week and shared them with my evening class :)

Most of the time, I could take or leave uncooked cake batter. I usually test a little bit to make sure it tastes OK, but this uncooked batter is AMAZING. I wouldn't recommend eating the whole thing (that is, if you are worried about raw eggs), but a good spoonful probably isn't going to hurt you. It has a mousse-like quality- very light and fluffy. After these cupcakes bake and cool, they have a very fudge dark chocolate taste. I topped them off with some milk chocolate ganache and they were PERFECT!

LESSON LEARNED: Adding 3 types of chocolate to cupcakes = AMAZING results!

Recipe for Fudge Cupcakes with Milk Chocolate Ganache

Lesson #47: Peanuty Pecan Oatmeal Cookies

This week I was hungry for a peanut butter oatmeal cookie that, well, tasted a little more interesting than a typical peanut butter oatmeal cookie. I saw a recipe in a food magazine that used toasted pecans in the cookie batter and I was sold!

The neat thing about this batter is that you combine the toasted pecans and peanut butter in a food processor to make a smooth paste. So, in essence, you taste the pecans, but there are no chunks of pecans. If you don't know that there are pecans in the cookies, it makes you wonder why they taste different (and a little better, in my opinion!) than typical peanut butter cookies. I was a little skeptical about how other people would like these cookies, so I took them to my 8am class this week. Only 10 students wanted cookies, but they finished 2 dozen cookies in 5 minutes! I would say these were a SUCCESS.

LESSON LEARNED: Pecans make a good addition to peanut butter oatmeal cookies!

Recipe for Peanuty Pecan Oatmeal Cookies

Lesson #46: Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon & Sugar Doughnuts

Last weekend, my mom bought me a doughnut pan (kinda like a cupcake pan, but it's in the shape of doughnuts). I'm a sucker for new baking gadgets, so I had to try it out right away. I didn't have any recipe bookmarked for doughnuts, so I decided to use the recipe off the back of the packaging for the pan. Plus, since these are baked doughnuts, not fried, I thought they are a touch healthier. It turns out that it's a pretty good recipe and a fun baking pan!

The doughnuts are light & fluffy - not at all like the super dense cake doughnuts you buy in the store. The key to the lightness is cake flour, which contains less gluten than regular all-purpose flour. Then, I added pumpkin spice to give these doughnuts a little extra "fall" flavor. They are also made with buttermilk which makes them a bit tangy.  Finally, I dipped the finished doughnuts in butter and rolled them in cinnamon/sugar. DELICIOUS! My afternoon class DEVOURED them in 5 minutes :)

 

LESSON LEARNED: Homemade doughnuts are amazing!

Recipe for Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Sugar Doughnuts

Lesson #45: PIneapple Upside Down Cake Ice Cream

Justin, my husband, LOVES ice cream. He is always encouraging me to come up with new and exciting flavors because he loves to sample the results. After a little brainstorming, I decided to turn a classic dessert like pineapple upside down cake into an ice cream. YUMMY, right?

The base of the ice cream is my recipe for cake batter ice cream. It uses a boxed cake mix in the custard which makes it taste exactly like store bought ice cream. While the custard was chilling in the refrigerator, I sauteed some chopped pineapple in butter and brown sugar until it was golden and sticky - similar to what you would find in the bottom of the cake. To make this ice cream even better, I mixed in chopped cherries with the pineapples! Enjoy!

LESSON LEARNED: Classic desserts can be turned into ice cream!

Recipe for Pineapple Upside Down Cake Ice Cream

Lesson #44: Chocolate Banana Muffins

How do you jazz up banana muffins? Add melted chocolate into the batter! Yes, this is as DELICIOUS as it sounds :) I think that both banana and chocolate can be aggressive flavors, but when they are paired together, the sweetness from the banana and the bitterness of the chocolate complement each other perfectly. I used a high quality dark chocolate (i.e. Valrhona 70% cocoa) in this recipe, but you could use a milk chocolate too.

I varied the baking times in this recipe to achieve the perfect amount of gooey-ness. I prefer slightly underbaked banana muffins (especially right out of the oven!) because I think it keeps the muffins from drying out for a few days. So, in this case, I baked the muffins for 18 minutes. If you want the muffins to be completely cooked, bake them for 20 minutes or until they puff up. Either way, you'll be glad you made these muffins!

LESSON LEARNED: Vary baking times to get your desired level of gooey-ness!

Recipe for Chocolate Banana Muffins