Vanilla Icing

Peanut Butter Cup Crackle Brownies

It's a habit of mine to look over the Internet while I'm sipping on a cup of coffee to find inspiration and new things to try.   One particular day,  I made one of those crazy leaps from Instagram-to blog-to blog-to pinterest-to blog and found myself drooling over Cookies & Cups Peanut Butter Cup Crack Brownies.  I had to make them.  That very night!

When one works with their mother-in-law and several other women older than oneself,  it doesn't seem particularly nice to use the word 'crack' in a recipe title.  I thought a slight name alteration was in order to better suit the possible sensibilities of those at my office so I could bring the brownies in the next day to share.   

I made a few other alterations along the way because I don't particularly care for a brownie box mix and I'm a little crazy for my peanut butter.   Certainly, if you prefer a boxed mix either for taste or ease, please go ahead and use one.   The original recipe found HERE uses a Ghiradelli box mix and also less peanut butter and incorporated in a slightly different way.

 

Peanut But Cup Crackle Brownies

         adapted and inspired from Shelly at Cookies & Cups

 For the Brownies:

 1 1/2 sticks of butter, melted

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 tsp vanilla

3 eggs

 3/4 cup flour

1/2 cup cocoa

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

For the Peanut Butter Layer:

8 Reeses Peanut Butter cups, chopped   (I buy the little package of 8 individual ones as they go on sale often)

1/2 cup roasted and salted peanuts, salted  (example:  Planter’s Dry Roasted Peanuts)

3/4 cup creamy peanut butter    (I strongly recommend NOT using natural.  It’s too dry.  Use Jif or something similar)

For the Crackle Layer:

 2 cups of chocolate chips — Milk OR semi-sweet would do 

3/4 cups peanut butter

1 tsp vanilla

1 3/4 cups rice krispie cereal

 ONE:

 1.  Line a 9 by 9 pan with foil (this will aid in removing them from the pan later) with at least a couple of inches over hang on a two of the sides.  Spray well with Pam or grease with additional butter being careful not to tear the foil.  Preheat oven to 350.

 2.  In a small bowl, mix the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt.  Set aside.  In another bowl, combine the melted butter and the sugar.  Beat in the eggs and vanilla.   Slowly and thoroughly mix in the flour mixture.   Pour and spread into prepared pan.

 3.  Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.

 TWO:

 1.  Remove the brownies from the oven and sprinkle them with the chopped reeses peanut butter cups and chopped peanuts.  Return to oven for five minutes.

 2.  Remove the brownies from the oven and spread the melted peanut butter cups and peanuts across the surface.   Drop dollops of the peanut butter onto the top of the brownies and wait a few moments.  The peanut butter will start to melt.  Very carefully, so as not to mix the layers, spread the peanut butter evenly across the top.  

3.  Place pan in the refrigerator while you prepare Step 3.

 THREE:

 1.  In a double boiler, or a large bowl set over a pan of simmering water, combine the chocolate chips, peanut butter, and butter.   Let the mixture melt and stir it occasionally until it is completely smooth.

 2.  Remove the bowl from the heat and stir in the vanilla and the rice krispies.  Take the brownie pan out of the refrigerator and careful pour the kripsie mixture on top.  Again, be careful not to mix the layers and and spread the krispie mixture evenly across the top.  Return to the refrigerator until completely cool and set (about two hours) and then cut.   

 The brownies can be stored well covered or in the refrigerator for a few days.  I think they taste best at room temperature so if you keep them in the fridge you might want to let them come to room temp first.

 

Cooking At The Office

The last five months I've been working full time at our family business and while it's not exactly something I enjoy doing, I've been finding ways to make it better.   It's a hard adjustment to be confined to a desk all day long staring at a computer and stacks of paper and I admire all of those who have been doing  this all along.    I'm much more used to getting the children fed, ready, and out the door for school and then having hours upon hours to do the chores at home, the errand running, working out and most importantly the baking and the cooking!

At the office for eight hours a day,  I haven't been able to figure out how to fit in all that I'm used to doing in a day.  The first few months I struggled a lot to get everything done and with some of the things--namely the chores and errand running--I'm still trying to figure it out.  But I have figured out two things:  working out and the cooking.

My dearest friend, Missy, who attended school with me from Kindergarten all the way through Highschool Graduation and now works at our office, has helped me greatly by being sweet and supportive of all of my griping.  We have decided to use our lunch hour wisely and spend either the first 30 or the second 30 of it getting in a walk.  Lucky for us, when we step out of the office there's a sidewalk for us to follow and if we keep our steps brisk, we can get two miles in and feel all the better for it.  There's something about fresh air that really clears the mind!

Missy doesn't really enjoy cooking but she's happy to wash dishes if I do the cooking so we make an effective lunchtime team.   Armed with a hot plate, toaster oven, and microwave I'm finding creative ways to cook healthy lunches with good wholesome food.   My attitude at work is already beginning to improve a little now that I'm not feeling confined to cold sandwiches, processed foods, and dashes to local-bad-for-you eateries.   

It's not so hard to do if you have a plan and do a few things ahead of time such as picking up your necessary ingredients and keeping that at hand in office kitchen.   Missy and I are still on the plan a day or two at a time but we have aspirations to work on a weekly meal plan for breakfasts and lunches. I'm cooking for three of us--Missy, my husband, and myself--but it would be just as easy to cook for one or a couple more.

Baked Potato at 375

1.  Two hours prior to lunch, toss a couple of foil wrapped fork pricked baking potatoes in the toaster oven and set for 375 degrees.

2.  Thirty minutes prior to lunch*, place chicken breasts on lightly greased baking pan.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper and/or choice of seasonings.  Slide onto the second rack of the toaster oven and go for a walk!

3.  Return from the walk, remove the potatoes and chicken from the toaster oven.  Brush some barbecue sauce on the chicken  and return to the oven for a few minutes while you cut open and fluff your baked potato.    Cube the chicken toss on the baked potato and top with a slice of low fat cheese and enjoy!    

If you don't want to bother with the chicken, skip this step and when you return from the walk, put a steamer bag of broccoli (plain, seasoned, or the sort that has cheese sauce) in the microwave and top your potato with that instead.  Or in addition!

The only step not completed during the lunch hour is putting the baked potatoes in the oven and that literally takes about two minutes if you haven't wrapped them in foil ahead of time.   No reason at all you can't detour by the toaster oven on the way to the water cooler or the coffee pot!  No excuses!

Halloween Makings

Maia asked for a Halloween party this year and I thought it sounded like a lot of fun.   She was in charge of the invite list and making the invitations but left the rest to me.   I asked a good friend of mine, Missy, and her sister Amanda to help me.   They both are very good at party planning and enjoy it thoroughly.  

Amanda was creative force behind the decorations, Missy was our logistics and miscellania pro and also used her creative talents at graphic design for various labels and signs.  Of course that left me with the treats!!    I also made the food and while it was cute--ghost pizza, spooky spider cheese, fried worms & spiders with vampire's blood--it's just wasn't as fun to make or photograph.

These vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting almost didn't happen.  I was determined to find a little spider to perch on the white chocolate spiderwebs but couldn't find teeny spiders anywhere.  I contemplated for a half minute piping spiders too but I didn't see how their legs would hold up and quickly abandoned that idea.  Lucky for me, Missy saved the day and found the spiders....in the button section of Jo-Ann Fabrics.

The chocolate dipped pretzels were a breeze to make but a few hours when I lifted them from the wire rack some of the drizzled colored candy came up.  I found this disappointing but luckily it wasn't too bad.  I'm not sure how to avoid this--perhaps spray the wire rack with Pam first?  Run a finger or a knife between the drizzled candy while it's still soft to help separate the drizzles from one another and prevent it being pulled up?   

Dipping things into melted candy coating always seems such an easy thing to me until I begin to do it. Within minutes, I'm having a melt down of my own as it's not going as well as I planned it to.   Things dip smoothly and then have a weird lump or swirl somewhere and it annoys me.   The candy overheats despite all of my precautions (lowest heat, double boiler, etc) and I have to stop and thin it.   

For this particular treat, it was the Halloween Oreos inside the pop that gave me such grief.   They simply were too heavy to stay on the stick.   The first one I tried plopped right into the bowl of candy coating leaving me dismayed and holding an empty stick.  The next one, I 'glued' the stick inside the Oreo with a bit of additional candy coating before I dipped it.  It fell off too.   And so did the one I glued and froze for fifteen minutes after I remembered how you freeze cake balls prior to making cake pops.   Finally, I picked up a small offset spatula and one by one coated the Oreos on their sticks and sprinkled each one with nonpareils before moving on to the next one.

It took me over three hours to do six Oreos for the party plus another 36 for the brass section of my son's high school marching band.  I'm still traumatized.

Hershey Bats were a breeze to make in comparison to the Halloween Oreo Pops.   I printed off a bat template and traced it onto black construction paper.  A few minutes with scissors, some dabs of glue for the googly eyes, and a white out pen for the toothy grins and the bats were finished.   The fun sized Hershey bars are held onto the bat with a strip of double sided tape.

A Hershey Bat, a Ghost Peep, and a graham cracker was nestled in a small bag and then this adorable label (also by Missy) was attached to the top.   The party go-ers later oohed and aahed over the Spooky S'mores which was satisfying but then I must admit it became somewhat horrifying as six s'more's craving girls ripped into the little bags around little fire in the chiminea on the deck.  Labels and bats with their bellies torn out went flying every which way.   I guess since it was Halloween it was pretty appropriate.

A small glimpse of Amanda's decorating:  In the foreground is a string of lights that has hand tied fabric ties up and down the length of it and then it was illuminated by a black light.  In the background, there are handcut bats, sticky spiderwebs, candles, a skull, and a handmade burlap banner.  

The dining room, foyer, and kitchen were well decorated too but the best pictures are the ones that have all of the girls in them and I wouldn't want to share pictures of other people's children without prior permission.  There was another burlap banner, a spooky miniature Halloween town on the victrola, more spiderwebs and lights, mysterious potions and a spell book, a broomstick next to a smoking cauldron, and so many other little touches that I don't think I could list them all!  The girls spent a lot of time looking at all of the decorations and even the next morning when they had pancakes by candlelight they were still getting up to look at this thing and that.

The games were of the more traditional sort.   They bobbed for apples, made mummies (teams of two and each team gets a roll of toilet paper to see who can make a mummy the faster out of the entire roll), dropped clothespin bats into a jar, and were blindfolded to listen to a creepy story that had disgusting things to touch like eyeballs (peeled grapes), windpipe (cold, cooked manicotti pasta), and a clammy hand (rubber glove filled with cold sand) to name a few.    Amanda also brought a glitter tattoo set and the girls painted their nails in Halloween colors while waiting their turn to be tattoed.  

A three hour party goes by quickly when there's plenty to eat, see, and do.   Maia thanked me over and over and over later and said she had an 'awesome time.'  I think the other girls did too because Missy, Amanda, and I got plenty of thank yous as they left and they all seemed to be very excited, happy, and tired when it was time to go.   I know the three of us adults were!   

I was very grateful for all of the help I had in planning Maia's party and again I want to say:  Thank you Missy and Amanda for all of your help!  I really appreciated it!  And....if you need someone on the treats and sweet team for that baby shower and that Santa's Breakfast I now you're planning you know who to ask!