No-Bake Peanut Butter Squares

My baking has really suffered lately because it’s just been too hot to bake. I live in the Seattle area where everyone says that it’s too mild to need air conditioning. This is usually true, but not this week! Seattle set an all-time high record on Wednesday, 103 degrees. I live further away from the water so it was even warmer where I live. In addition to the 100 degree day, it’s been in the 90s since Sunday. Now this wouldn’t be so bad if it were only hot outside, but since I have no air conditioning at home, if it is 100 degrees outside it is also 100 degrees inside.

My husband had sent me a website with no-bake recipes, so that’s what I ended up doing. In all honesty, it was too hot to even make no-bake cookies, as I’m drenched in sweat it if get up and walk to another room! These were fairly easy to put together and they taste really great, but I wouldn’t advise doing anything if your house is 100 degrees inside. Go to the mall or to the movies and stay cool!

I made some changes to this recipe. The original recipe calls for graham cracker crumbs and I didn’t want to use those. I’d recently had a cookie with a graham cracker crust and it was so overpowering. I figured any type of cookie crumbs would work, so I used vanilla wafers. I don’t think I used quite 3 cups, but I was fairly close to that. The recipe also said to use 1-1/2 cups of butter (3 sticks) which just seemed like so much butter for a recipe that fits into a 9 inch square pan. I mixed in half that amount and it seemed like things were cohesive enough so I didn’t add any more.

These are really great cookies for no-bakes; if you didn’t know they were no-bake cookies I don’t think that you would guess that they were. The topping is excellent and these taste a lot like a peanut butter cup. I’m glad that I used vanilla wafer crumbs, since they have a nice light flavor. I thought about making these cookies with nutella, which I think would be really good. For that I would probably use some sort of nut cookie crumbs, just to enhance the flavor. I’m really glad that I made these, even though it was so hot when I did. If you’re stuck in a too-hot house and feel the need to make cookies, give these a try.

1 3/4 cups powdered sugar

1 1/2 sticks butter, softened

1 cup peanut butter

1 tsp. vanilla

3 cups vanilla wafer crumbs

1 cup chopped peanuts

2 cups chocolate chips

1/4 cup peanut butter

Line a 9x9x2 inch pan with aluminum foil. (Leave about 1 inch hanging over the opposite sides so you can lift the bars easily from the pan.)

In a large bowl, mix the powdered sugar, butter, 1 cup peanut butter, and vanilla. Stir in the vanilla wafer crumbs and peanuts. (The mixture will be stiff.) Press mixture into the pan.

Over low heat stir together the chocolate chips and 1/4 cup peanut butter until smooth. Spread over the mixture in the pan. Cover and refrigerate about an hour or until the chocolate is set. Remove from the pan and cut the bars into 36 squares. Refrigerate about 2 hours or until firm. Refrigerate any leftovers.

Recipe from Rachel Keller, http://www.allhomemadecookies.com/recipes/nobake/nbpeanutbuttersq.htm

Devilish Pecan Pie

No Tuesdays with Dorie for me this week. This week’s selection was Vanilla Ice Cream, selected by Lynne of Café LunnyLu. It’s been so hot here that I just haven’t had the energy to make anything! I also don’t have an ice cream maker, so making ice cream becomes an all day event. I decided to skip this week and post a recipe that was made a couple of weeks ago that I just had never got around to posting.

This pie was made by my husband, who has made a couple of different things for this blog. Lately he has been making any and everything with honey. This is a chocolate pecan pie that uses honey instead of corn syrup or brown sugar that you traditionally find in a pecan pie recipe. I’m not sure what makes this “devilish” but that’s what the National Honey Board named this recipe.

This is very simple to put together, and you can use any pie shell that you’d like. We happened to have an extra pie shell in the freezer that that’s what my husband used. This pie is very, very sweet! You need to serve this with ice cream to cut some of the sweetness. It does have a clear honey flavor, which mellowed over time. We’ve found that to be the case with most items with honey; they are extremely sweet right after you bake them but then become less so over the next few days.

1-1/2 cups coarsely chopped pecans

6 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 9-inch unbaked pie shell

3 large eggs

1 cup honey

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled

Sprinkle nuts and chips over bottom of pie shell. In medium bowl, whisk together eggs, honey and vanilla. Blend in butter and pour mixture into pie shell. Bake at 325°F for 50 to 60 minutes or until firm. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.

Recipe from http://www.honey.com/consumers/recipes/recipe_detail.asp?RecipeID=433

Flourless Fudge Cookies

My friend came over recently to learn a little bit about baking, and we made these cookies. I asked her what she wanted to make, and she requested something with chocolate, but no nuts or coconut. I told her that I would find recipes that fit the bill, and then would decide when she came over. I had this recipe saved in my favorites folder, and we ended up deciding to make this recipe. For someone new to baking, we couldn’t have selected an easier recipe!

This recipe is from King Arthur Flour. I love making their things! I also love that they are so nice to bloggers. I’ve had a couple of comments on my blog from folks at King Arthur Flour and they are so positive and seem genuinely happy that you are making their recipes. There’s one publication that I’m almost afraid to make their recipes, since I’ve heard that sometimes they are really cruel to bloggers. I’m happy to make things from King Arthur Flour, and I love buying things from their Baker’s Catalog .

These cookies showed up on King Arthur’s blog, Bakers’ Banter , and I knew that I had to try them. These cookies have no added fat, which for a cookie recipe would usually have me running the other way, but these looked so good. I ended up adding chocolate chips, which have fat, so mine are not fat free. For those looking for a gluten-free cookie, they fit the bill as long as you use gluten free vanilla. (From the limited Internet research I did, I learned that chocolate chips are gluten free, so feel free to add those, too.)

These are super simple, just add everything together and stir. My friend learned how to separate eggs, since this recipe calls for egg whites. I used a combination of natural and Dutch-process cocoa powder, which seemed to work out fine. You have the option of 2 cups of additional add-ins, such as nuts or chocolate chips, and I did add the chocolate chips. I think that they would be good with nuts and mini marshmallows, to make a rocky road cookie. If you don’t add any extras, these cookies spread a lot, but with the chocolate chips they didn’t spread much at all. It’s a bit difficult to tell when they are done, but the tops do get shiny and they look a little dry. They have an intense chocolate flavor, and you really have no idea that they are gluten free and relatively low in fat. These were wonderful and the perfect thing to make if you want a simple, intense chocolate cookie.

2-1/4 cups confectioners' sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon espresso powder

1 cup cocoa powder, Dutch-process preferred

3 large egg whites

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease two baking sheets. Or line with parchment, and grease the parchment.

Stir together all of the ingredients till smooth. Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl, and stir again till smooth. Drop the dough onto the prepared baking sheets using a tablespoon-sized cookie scoop.

Bake the cookies for 10 minutes; they spread only slightly, become somewhat shiny, and develop faintly crackly tops. Remove the cookies from the oven, and allow them to cool right on the pan.

Recipe from King Arthur Flour

Raspberry Blanc-Manger

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Susan of Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy. She selected the Raspberry Blanc-Manger, check out Susan’s blog for the complete recipe. What is a blanc-manger? The translation of the French is not so helpful. This is similar to panna cotta, sort of a pudding, a whipped cream dessert that uses gelatin to hold its form. This version contains ground almonds, which I understand is traditional, and fresh raspberries, which is not.

I wasn’t looking forward to this recipe, maybe because I really didn’t know what it would be like. I didn’t know if it would be hard to make. It was actually very quick to put together, it used quite a few bowls, pots, and pans, but other than that it was quite simple. I had a friend visiting while I made this, and she helped me out so that made it seem even easier. She got to learn a few new things about baking (although nothing in this recipe is actually baked), and I got some help. It was a lot of fun.

The basis of this recipe is whipped cream, to which you add some sugar, ground almonds, and gelatin. You fold that all together and then fold in the raspberries. I think I have finally conquered my fear of folding, and my friend got to fold something for the first time. Spoon it into a pan and then refrigerate for a couple of hours until set. I was a little worried that I hadn’t greased the pan or anything, but the recipe didn’t say to, so I hoped it would be ok. To unmold it from the pan, you dip the pan in hot water and then invert it on to a serving plate. And you hope that it comes out of the pan. Mine came out fine, not on the first try, so I dipped the pan in the water again and it came out fine the second try.

I’d never made anything like this before and I liked it. The texture was nice and light, not too sweet, but quite rich. The texture is sort of like a whipped cheesecake, but the flavor is different, not the heaviness that a cheesecake sometimes has. The almonds have a good flavor and the raspberries add their own sweetness and a little bit of tartness. My husband said that it reminds him of rice pudding. I wonder what this would taste like frozen? I think that would be great! I was pleasantly surprised by this. It was quick and easy to put together and was very impressive in the end.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 398-399.

Summer Berry Tart

The town where I grew up has a lot of agricultural areas, so I could always get fresh berries this time of the year. The house that I lived in until I was 5 had many blueberry bushes in the back yard. It seemed like we had tons and tons of blueberry bushes, but I was 5 and I really have no idea how many bushes there were. I do remember that there were spiders in the bushes and I don’t like spiders!

My husband was at Whole Foods the other day and noticed that they had ½ flats of a combination of raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries from a local farm. I happen to drive by this particular farm when I go and visit my parents, so I was really happy to buy berries that I actually knew where they had been grown. We used up some of the berries but still had about half of them left. This recipe calls for precisely the amount of berries we had left. I even had graham crackers on hand so I could make the crust.

I just happened to have the combination of berries that the recipe called for, but you could use 6 cups of any berries that you might happen to have. I also used apricot preserves rather than red currant or apple jelly. It worked just fine. Pureeing the berries was the easy part, straining them through a sieve was tough! This took a bit of patience, but I eventually extracted all of the puree. My puree thickened almost immediately, so I didn’t cook the mixture for 7 minutes. Don’t skimp on the lemon juice, it really adds a lot.

It had been a bit of a baking madhouse at our place when I made this tart, and I was actually worried that the tart had spoiled before I had a chance to try it. The recipe says that it keeps for just a day or so, but this tart was still good 4 days after making it. I’m so glad that it was still good because this tart is excellent. It doesn’t have very much sugar, so you get the natural tartness of the berries shining through. The puree is very intense but really adds everything to the tart. My crust fell apart a little bit, but I think I could have done a better job pressing the crumbs into the pie plate. This was a great tart and was the perfect way to use summer berries.

2 cups raspberries

2 cups blackberries

2 cups blueberries

½ cup sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 tablespoons red current or apple jelly

Graham Cracker Crust

1-1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs

5 tablespoons butter, melted

2 tablespoons sugar

To prepare the crust:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Combine the graham cracker crumbs, melted butter and sugar. Pour the crumbs into a 9 inch pie plate. Using the bottom of a measuring cup, press the crumbs into an even layer on the bottom and side of the pan. Bake until the crust begins to brown, 15-20 minutes. Cool completely.

Gently toss the berries together. Puree 2-1/2 cups of the berries in a food processor until very smooth. Strain the puree through a fine-mesh strainer into a small saucepan, pressing on the seeds to extract as much puree as possible.

Whisk the sugar, cornstarch, and salt together, the whisk the mixture into the puree. Bring the puree to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Cook until the mixture is thick, about 7 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice. Set aside to cool slightly.

Melt the jelly in a small saucepan and drizzle over the remaining berries. Toss gently to coat. Pour the slightly cooled puree into the cooled pie crust. Top with the jelly-coated berries. Cover the pie loosely with plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled and the puree has set, about 3 hours.

Recipe from America’s Test Kitchens Family Cookbook