Peanut Butter Milk Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Yesterday, Jake decided to read all of my cookbooks. He pulled pretty much every single book off the shelf, one at a time, to ooh and aah over the glorious photos and recite every single letter in every single recipe title.

That kid. Adorable.

Somehow in the middle of this, I developed a hankering for peanut butter cookies. I’m pretty sure that was Jake’s goal all along.

These are not your average criss-cross peanut butter cookie, oh no. These are thin, crispy-edged delights with soft, gooey centers. These are milk chocolate chip cookies to the max, plus a hint of snickerdoodle. In short, these peanut butter beauties are all kinds of amazing.

Salty Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies

I am just going to warn you right now that the baking monster has been on a bit of a crazy rampage lately. And I am going to unabashedly point my finger right at Sarah of Well Dined. It’s totally her fault.

Several weeks ago, she confessed that she was afraid of baking cookies from scratch…and something inside my brain popped. Instead of cooking (somewhat) healthy lunches together each week, we started baking decadent desserts like it was no big deal.

But, friends…it was a big deal. I can’t stop baking.

So just get ready for an onslaught of brownie and cookie recipes, because it’s happening.

Starting here. With the very brownies that broke my willpower to not eat desserts. (Let’s be honest, that willpower wasn’t back to full strength after its pregnancy vacation, so it didn’t really stand a chance.) These brownies are thick and cakey and sweet and salty and all the things that are good about peanut butter and chocolate together. Make them. Who needs willpower?

Spicy Peanut Noodles with Shrimp

I can’t believe my beautiful girl is 4 weeks old! But it was a long road in getting there (and I’m not just talking about sleepless nights)…did you know she was a week overdue?

I spent a lot of time during the last few weeks of my pregnancy doing one “last” adventure with Jake, one “last” trip to the store, one “last” load of laundry/other heinous cleaning chore… I sure was ready to meet my girl and stop being pregnant! But she was pretty cozy and reluctant to make her entrance. Finally, I decided to try smoking her out.

This meal was one of many versions of what I called “Get-Out-Of-Me-Baby” food: simple, spicy dishes that I hoped would somehow convince Caitlin that the outside world would be a welcome change.

(In case you wondered…the spicy foods didn’t faze her. But this was still a delicious meal!)

Oatmeal Energy Bites

Does this ever happen to you?:

Some time in September—because you are planning ahead—you diligently buy two bags of candy to give out at Halloween. (Naturally, you buy the good kinds, the chocolate kinds you actually like, because last year only four children and one group of ridiculous teenagers came to your door…and if there’s going to be leftover candy, you at least want to enjoy it, right?)

You carefully shove the two small bags of candy to the back of the tallest shelf in the pantry, and then you studiously ignore them for three weeks.

Then…one night, you open the Reese’s, because you are stressed, or emotional, or peckish…and before you know it, you have to go buy two whole new bags of Halloween candy.

And, to make matters worse, now you have awoken your sweet tooth, and it wants more candy!

After several days of an insatiable desire for dessert, I decided it was time to make a dessert I wouldn’t feel guilty eating, one that would even do a little good while it quenched my desire for Reese’s cups: peanut butter oatmeal balls.

Vegan Chocolate Peanut Butter Bites

If you had told me this time last year that I would be obsessed with desserts made out of dates, I would not have believed you.

Maybe I would have made a quip about going out on dates.

But probably I would just have looked at you like you were an alien.

Oh, one-year-ago-Melissa, what a wide world was ahead of you.

So I’ve been making variations on chocolate-date-nut balls all month. And then I had an epiphany that peanut butter would be amazing. Kind of like a Reese’s! Which is exactly what these PB bites taste like.

These little “cookies” are super easy to make. I used all-natural, no-sugar-added peanut butter (just ground peanuts and a touch of salt, the healthiest way to eat peanut butter, for sure), which I have recently converted to. You could roll them in a  little cocoa for an extra chocolatey punch, but I flattened mine with a fork, just like classic peanut butter cookies.

Fudgy Brownie Buckeye Cookies

Have you ever had a buckeye? A dense, melt-in-your-mouth peanut butter ball dipped in chocolate?

I must confess, I haven’t. Honestly, peanut butter desserts did not appeal to me as a kid, and I am only just now expanding my sweet palate beyond pure chocolate.

Nevertheless, as I flipped through the beautiful pages of the Joy the Baker Cookbook for the first time last year, these were immediately at the top of my list of recipes to try. Joy deconstructed the classic buckeye and planted the peanut butter ball on top of a soft, fudgy brownie cookie. Amazing!

I put off making these cookies for over a year…I think I was afraid they would be a lot of work (Oh my gosh…I have to get out two bowls!? And make two different components!?). But now that I’ve tried these (ahem…I ate about five of them on the spot), I can happily report that these cookies are not scary, and definitely worth the 10 minutes it took to roll out the balls.

Don’t make my same mistake! Try these cookies immediately!

Peanut Butter Cream Pie

Happy Pie Day!

If you’re scratching your head right now and wondering what Pie Day is, just drag yourself back to your high school algebra classes and think, “3.14.”

I love any day whose chief celebration involves making dessert. This year for Pie Day, I bring you a simple treat that only takes about 20 minutes of hands-on time. That means if you forgot it was Pie Day, but you want to mark the occasion in style, you still have plenty of time to make it happen!

Butter Buddies

My husband and I recently took a mini vacation in the Shenandoahs. By the way, if you have never done that, it’s beautiful! The views are just incredible, and if you get a clear night the stars will take your breath away. We had a room with no TV and no internet, which may sound like torture, but it was actually kind of a relief to be screen-free for the weekend. We took hikes and read books and played games…

And suddenly I was transported back to childhood camping trips that my family took. We would pack our old brown Caravan full of gear and coolers and snacks and drive for about a thousand pages (er…hours…) down to Florida where, unlike in the rest of the eastern seaboard, it was warm.

My mom always made these great snacks for us, and chief among the camping delights I found myself craving during our weekend in the Shenandoahs was butter buddies.

Butter Buddies are much like Muddy Buddies…except they are even more awesome. Instead of chocolate and peanut butter, which is definitely a strong combination, my mom made her confectioner’s-sugar-covered Chex with butterscotch and peanut butter. Believe me, that combination is amazing! Sweet and salty at the same time, but a much lighter and brighter flavor than the choco-peanut butter mix. I love it.

So when we returned home, literally the first thing I did was buy a box of Chex so I could make myself some butter buddies. These take about 10 minutes to make, and they are basically irresistible. You know you want some…

Camp Hanover Fudgies

When I was younger, I went to summer camp. I was a summer camp expert: I climbed the ranks of the YMCA swimming tier (though..not very far, I must admit…), I slid down mudslides and went tubing on lakes, I grew into a four-square master, I learned how to gently de-hook fish, I became a seasoned canooer and archer, and I could write a mean group skit.

I also began a love affair with peanut butter at summer camp. For obvious reasons, I was never a peanut butter and jelly kind of girl, but one summer at Camp Hanover, which is probably the best sleepaway camp in the world, I learned about the real best friend of peanut butter: chocolate. And it is about time I shared with you my favorite cookout treat, since this is grilling season.

I will always associate these cookies with my childhood camp experiences. Every week, my group would gather next to the tether ball poles and anxiously discuss cookout plans: hoagies or hamburgers? Red bug juice (er…Kool-Aid) or orange? S’mores or FUDGIES!? The kitchen would send us a box full of supplies and we would hurry to our campsite and unload our goodies. You have no idea how delighted we were if we discovered our request for fudgies had been granted. And after our main meal, after cleaning our plates off with dirt (ah, those were the days) we’d get to enjoy our dessert. Let me tell you, those things disappeared quickly.