Easy Chocolate Sauce

A few weeks ago I had a friend over for an impromptu dinner in. I had some delicious ice cream in the freezer but felt like it needed a little something extra to make it even better.

Chocolate Glazed Peanut Butter Doughnuts

It only seemed right to post something for Valentine's day and, unlike most other holidays, I actually managed to get it posted before the holiday so you can try to make these for your Valentine. 

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

This recipe popped up in one of my Martha Stewart emails recently and I was intrigued. I wanted to bring a little something to an event I was attending and, knowing someone I was planning to share the treats with has an issue with gluten, this recipe seemed like a good option. It also just happened to be National Peanut Butter Day. Who knew?

Butterscotch Peanut Butter Marshmallow Squares

When I was younger, I remember I always avoided these squares when I saw them on a dessert tray. I'm not really sure why. It could have been my aversion to most things butterscotch but I'm glad I eventually gave them a chance. 

Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Treats

As I've mentioned here before, I love chocolate and peanut butter and I love Resse's Peanut Butter cups. Every holiday season they come out with a different shape to celebrate the season. Pumpkins for Halloween, trees for Christmas, and eggs for Easter. There's something about the chocolate to peanut butter ratio of these treats that makes me love them just that much more than regular peanut butter cups.

I share this love of holiday peanut butter shapes with one of my previous coworkers (hi Lesley!). We used to pick up extras when we saw them to share with the other. While these treats are super delicious, they're not always that easy to find around here.

That's why, when I saw this recipe link on Serious Eats the other day, I knew I was going to have to try them for myself. Unfortunately, the only pumpkin cutter I could find was way too big for these so I had to settle for my other festive shapes (owls and bats) and a random flowery shaped thing. The recipe follows below.

Homemade Chocolate Peanut Butter Pumpkins

slightly adapted from Miss Make via Serious Eats

1 cup creamy peanut butter

1/4 cup butter, softened

2 cups unsifted powdered sugar

12 oz chocolate chips (I used half semi-sweet and half milk chocolate)

1 tbsp shortening 

In a large bowl mix together peanut butter, butter and powdered sugar until crumbly. 

 

  Turn out onto a cutting board and knead until it comes together and you feel like it can be rolled out.

 Roll dough out on a parchment lined surface to a generous 1/4" thickness. Using a small cookie cutter, cut out your shapes. Use whatever shape you've got - I had flowers, owls and bats. Gather the scraps together and roll out again. Continue until you've used all the dough.

 Place the cut out shapes in the freezer. Meanwhile, in a glass bowl (or over a double boiler) melt chocolate and shortening in the microwave 30 seconds at a time until smooth and liquidy. 

 Using a fork, dunk each frozen pumpkin in the chocolate, shaking off the excess. Place the dipped shapes on a parchment or wax paper lined baking sheet and refrigerate until set. 

 The finished product should look something like this. 

These were delicious. So chocolatey and peanut buttery and so soft and melty. I really enjoyed them and they were pretty easy to make. They took a little longer to get together than I thought they would but it was worth it. My coworkers seemed to like them. I had at least one request for the recipe and that's always a good sign. The only issue I had with them was that they got really soft after a short time out of the fridge. If you aren't planning to serve them fairly soon after they come of out the fridge I would suggest maybe adding a little bit of wax to the chocolate to help keep them firm. I will certainly pull these out for the next major holiday. 

Do you have a favorite holiday version of a classic treat?

Review From the Road: Georgetown Cupcake

Last weekend I got to join one of my friends (hi Lyndsay!) in Washington, DC. Given my love for all things baked, I was curious to check out a famous cupcake shop in town - Georgetown Cupcake.

Georgetown Cupcake (@GTownCupcake) has risen to international fame through their TLC reality show, DC Cupcakes. Friends kept telling me I had to take in Georgetown while I was in DC. Since I was going to be in the neighborhood anyway, I checked out their website to see what they had to offer. I was officially sold when I saw I could order ahead and skip the line. They are notoriously busy (ironically, not on the day I visited) and the opportunity to skip the line was the deciding factor. We also had a belated birthday to celebrate and cupcakes just seemed to make sense.

The shop

The cupcakes

I opted for an assorted half dozen. There are a number of standard flavors they carry every day, some rotating daily flavors, and a few seasonal flavors too. I'll be honest. I had my doubts. I had yet to be even mildly impressed by any "professional" cupcakes I'd tried anywhere so I really had no expectations. I was especially doubtful because, in my experience, foods and restaurants that get the most public hype are the most likely to disappoint. I will admit it...I was wrong. These were absolutely delicious. I kept thinking the next one would be crap, but they just kept getting better.    

Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl

Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl was the first I tried. I bit in expecting it to be dry and tasteless like most cupcakes I've tried. It was moist and chocolatey and delicious. The ganache topping had a great taste and texture and the peanut butter filling seemed to be straight up peanut butter possibly mixed with a bit of icing sugar to stabilize it. I could have eaten a dozen of these. 

The rest were equally delicious. All were nice and moist, almost on the verge of under done which is so much better than being overdone and dry. The texture was great and the frostings were all delicious. Not too sweet and definitely made with real butter and not shortening like some bakeries. 

Caramel Apple

Apple cupcake with dulce de leche filling and cream cheese frosting.
 

Coconut

Coconut cupcake with vanilla cream cheese frosting and coconut on top. This was the only one I didn't love. I thought the coconut flavor was a little fake and I didn't like the stringiness of the shredded coconut in the cake. 
 

Pumpkin Spice

Pumpkin spice cupcake with maple cream cheese frosting. It tasted just like pumpkin pie. Somehow even the texture seemed right. 

Key Lime

The key lime cupcake with key lime frosting tasted remarkably like my own favorite lime cupcakes.

Milk Chocolate Birthday Cake

Milk chocolate birthday cake consisted of really good vanilla cake and perfect chocolate frosting. As always, the addition of sprinkles makes everything better. 

I'm happy to report that I was thoroughly impressed with Georgetown Cupcake. If you're in the DC area, I highly recommend you go and check them out. 

What's the best place you've tried after seeing it on TV? 

Cows Ice Cream: Take 2

While I was back home in PEI for my second trip this summer, I made a point to go back to Cows Creamery and try out some more great ice cream. While I was at the main location I got a chance to go on the factory tour with my brother and one of my cousins. I'd never been on the tour before so I was excited to see what it was all about. 

The tour started out with a short video to explain some of the history behind Cows, most of which I've covered here. First stop on the tour was a glimpse at the t-shirt printing presses. All of merchandise for all of the stores is made right here. Each arm of the machine puts a different color through the screens and onto the shirts. I thought that was pretty impressive. It looked too simple to be able to print as many items as they go through in a season.

 

Appropriately enough (for those who know me) they were printing the "Justin Beefer" shirt while we were there. 

 

There were huge prints of some of the most popular shirt designs hung on the walls. 

 

A reference to Anne of Green Gables for those not familiar.

I missed my opportunity to snap a picture of the room where the ice cream is actually made. I was sort of astounded to find out that all of the ice cream for all Cows locations for the entire season is made in this one (not very big) room over three days a week by three guys, one batch at a time.

Next stop on the tour was a view of the cheese room where they age their award winning cloth-bound cheddar for about 18 months at a very specific temperature and high humidity to replicate the environment in the caves where this kind of cheese is typically aged. The video also showed how they turn Island milk into thousands of pounds of delicious looking butter. Mmm...
 

On with the ice cream! Over the course of the trip we had four different combinations between us. Moo Crunch/Mocha Almond Fudge was my first cone. The Moo Crunch (chocolate ice cream with Cows-made "Skor" bits and peanut butter cups) was absolutely delicious. Soooooooooooo many peanut butter cups in this particular scoop. The Mocha Almond Fudge wasn't like I remembered it. It was one of my top three back in the day when I worked in Cavendish and was scoring the unofficial staff cones. However, I remember it having whole almonds and a more distinct mocha flavor than this scoop had. Could be a batch thing.  

Moo Crunch and Mocha Almond Fudge

Next up, my cousin had PEI Blueberry and Moo Crunch. She had nothing but good things to say about the blueberry. I also tried a sample and it was quite good. I'm not a huge fan of fruity ice cream but I think it would be really good if that's your thing. Sadly, she wasn't super impressed with her Moo Crunch. While the scoop I'd had a few days before was loaded with peanut butter cups, her scoop only had one. Sad. She had chosen that particular flavor because she wanted the peanut butter. 

PEI Blueberry and Moo Crunch

My brother chose Moo York Cheesecake (cheesecake base with Oreos) and mint chocolate. He really liked the mint with chocolate chunks. He also liked the cheesecake but he was expecting it to have a bit more of a distinctive cheesecakey flavor. 

Moo York Cheesecake and Mint Chocolate

For my second cone of the trip I went with Cookie Dough and Fluff 'n Udder (chocolate ice cream with marshmallow and peanut butter cups). The cookie dough was really good. I had tons of cookie dough chunks in my scoop and they had good flavor and texture. 
Sadly, my scoop of Fluff 'n Udder didn't live up to the deliciousness of the scoop I had last month. There was a good bit of marshmallow but only a single peanut butter cup.

Cookie Dough and Fluff 'n Udder

Overall, I think we were all happy with our selections. The only comment we all made was the inconsistency between scoops. Some were LOADED with mix-ins and some had none. I think it's a consequence of the way the ice cream is made. As we saw on the video during the tour, the ice cream and mix-ins are kind of layered in the container. I guess if I could make one suggestion to Cows it would be to find a way to mix things up a bit more. Nothing is worse than getting all excited for a scoop full of whatever and then finding you got none. Ice cream should be a happy experience! Regardless, I will certainly be back and I enjoyed introducing my cousin (from Boston) to a true Island experience.


What's your absolute favorite flavor of ice cream? 


*Thanks to Cows for providing me and my family with the Factory Tour and the delicious ice cream!

Island Fare: Cows Ice Cream

When I am home in PEI I am lucky enough to be less than five minutes away from the Cows Ice Cream Creamery. For those who aren’t familiar, Cows is an Island staple. They started selling their ice cream out in Cavendish (home of Anne of Green Gables) in 1983. Since then they have expanded their offerings to include more than 32 flavors of ice cream. There are currently 5 locations in PEI, one in Halifax, one in Niagara, one in Banff, and one in Whistler.

I’ll be honest…I wasn’t a huge fan of Cows until I spent my first summer working at the Cavendish Boardwalk. Over the summer I managed to make friends with a few of the people working at Cows and took full advantage of my access to $1 staff cones. I think I tried just about every available flavour that summer. I also used to think it was prohibitively expensive but, in my old age, I realize it’s really not that bad. A single cone (two scoops and up to two flavors) in a freshly made waffle cone comes in just under $5. The flavors also change daily depending on what runs out and what else they've got in the freezer. 

Flavors and prices

Freshly made waffle cones. I love that smell.

The Cows website claims there are three factors that make their ice cream so good:

1.    High (16%) butterfat content

2.    Minimum air creates a high density, slow to melt in your mouth ice cream

3.    Good ingredients like fresh cream, real eggs, sugar, pure natural vanilla, fresh PEI berries, and cocoa imported from Holland

Cows is also well known for their parody t-shirts and merchandise. These shirts were all the rage when I was in elementary school. I remember they were a very popular gift to give at birthday parties. They’ve evolved from generally funny word play to cowifying pop culture phenomena. Some of them are quite clever.

This is my current favorite. I think I want the mug.

This past visit had me trying out one new flavour and two that were definitely around last summer. Moo Henry (the new one reminiscent of an Oh Henry bar) is vanilla ice cream with gooey caramel swirl, brown sugar fudge, peanuts, and chocolate pieces. It was quite tasty. The caramel was a perfect consistency and the peanuts were a nice surprise. I didn’t come across them until I got into the second scoop. 

On my second trip I decided to maximize my scoopage and get two flavors in my single cone. Fluff ‘n Udder (fluffer nutter) is chocolate ice cream with marshmallow swirl and mini peanut butter cups. I had been disappointed by this one last year but, in this scoop, it redeemed itself. My second scoop was Peanut Butter Cup Cup - peanut butter ice cream with peanut butter swirl and mini peanut butter cups. Delicious! This scoop was also way better than I remembered it being.

Peanut Butter Cup Cup on top and Fluff 'n Udder on the bottom

All in all, if you find yourself in PEI, you should definitely track down a scoop of Cows. Even if you don’t like ice cream, the stores are fun to browse through and there's usually a large cow statue outside to take a picture with.

Do you have a favorite brand or flavor of ice cream that makes you think of home?

C is for Cookie

By the end of the work day today I had a hankering for cookies. Peanut butter cookies to be exact. For some reason, I've been thinking about these cookies for a few weeks. I last made them a couple of years ago for a birthday celebration at the office. It must have been in one of my daily Martha Stewart emails where I first saw this recipe for Peanut Butter Toffee cookies. How could they be bad? It's a really easy recipe to pull together. I made these tonight in under an hour even accounting for all the pauses for picture taking. A simple peanut butter base with added toffee bits and chocolate chips for good measure. The recipe calls for Skor bars (Heath for any Americans out there) but the chips were a more less expensive option.

First things first...peanut butter

Cookie dough sans goodies

Mmmm...

The finished product

Looks good enough to eat!

I think they turned out quite well. Hopefully my co-workers are ready for some sugar tomorrow.

Do you have any favorite, easy cookie recipes you're willing to pull together on a weeknight?