RECIPE: Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl

"Peanut butter [is] the pâté of childhood"

Florence Fabricant, NY Times

So I mentioned in my last blog post that I was hoping to try lots of new recipes and learn some new skills, but while going out into the magical world of the internet to find some exciting new ideas, I was really underwhelmed by the number of recipes that came without photos! I'm a big photo person (clearly) and apprehensive about trying a recipe that doesn't give me some idea of what I'll end up with...

Maybe that explains why I got into reading cook books instead of text books :)

Either way, it inspired me to start sharing some of the recipes I DO use, so that hopefully someone else who has my debilitating photo-less phobia can find some peace!

This recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl I actually found (embarrassingly) while trying to find recipes for a bake sale for Christchurch, and it was the only thing I already had all the ingredients for! Plus it's pretty, and delicious, and easy, and it combines chocolate and peanut butter, arguably one of the best combinations in the world - sorry Nicole, and Matt, this one's for Katie and Jayne!!

The cake itself was a caramel mud cake with a really rich chocolate ganache that I made for my good friend Katie for her birthday - it's important to note that I once made a very sweet - and very experimental - peanut-butter-cream-cheese-chocolate-slice-concoction for Katie at work, and she literally ate the whole thing... *sugar overload at the thought*

Needless to say, this was perfect for her :)

Warning : the recipe kinda suggests making this as a slice, but it is REALLY really sweet. I used half the recipe in the same size pan to make the slabs for the side of the cake - and even then it's very sweet! Love how it turned out though - and it went surprisingly well with caramel mud cake! (but then what doesn't :))

Enjoy it!!! it's absolutely delicious, and really addictive! I promise I'll look into some caramel options for those with an (unhealthy) aversion to the peanut butter :)

I recommend using blocks of chocolate (Cadbury, Dream, Lindt) instead of cooking chocolate for this - it's important that you like the taste of the chocolate since it's pretty much the main component!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl

360g white chocolate, chopped

1/2 cup (140g) smooth peanut butter

400g dark chocolate, chopped (I use milk, but it doesn't really matter)

1) Grease 20cm x 30cm lamington pan; line base and sides with baking paper extending 5cm above edges of pan (important, otherwise you can't get it out! trust me!)

2) Stir white chocolate in small heatproof bowl over small saucepan of simmering water until smooth; cool 5 minutes. Add peanut butter, stir until smooth

3) Stir dark chocolate in small heatproof bowl (blah blah - you know how to melt chocolate - I do it in the microwave in 20 second blasts!)

4) Drop alternate spoonfuls into pan. Gently shake the pan to level the mixture. Pull a skewer backwards and forwards to create marbled effect

5) stand at room temperature for 2 hours until set

Easy as pie! Though I recommend running lines gently through it with a knife after about an hour to make cutting slices easier later

Let me know if you try it and love it!

Katie - a very happy birthday! hope you're feeling better

- B xx

Too many cake pops

I'm starting to get quite a collection of baking related photos. Funnily enough, since first discovering http://www.bakerella.com/, I sense that my family is sloooowly getting sick of eating cake pops - luckily I'm also in the mood for cupcakes, brownies, and party planning!

These are just a few examples of the cake pops (I should say cake bites - they originated as cake pops, but became pop-less BITES when I realised I haven't got the hang of getting the sticks to STAY in the cake) that I've made over the last couple of weeks. A lot of time was spent dramatically throwing away burnt chocolate, pulling my hair out re-reading Bakerella's recipes, and eating cake pop/bites that went terribly wrong - don't be mistaken, even if they look good in the photos, notice there's never more than 5 or 6! The rest already crashed and burned, and ended up in someones tummy (I can think of worse things though, cake is still cake whether it looks good or not! A rose is still a rose, and all that)

So first up, I decided to try an alternative to cake - inspiration came from a friend at work who has a healthy obsession with peanut butter. These are just crushed up vanilla wine biscuits (great if you need to vent! Nothing better than a big rolling pin and an innocent bag of biscuits) mixed with peanut butter instead of frosting. For future reference, use SMOOTH not crunchy - crunchy was all we had, and it made the mixing process a little frustrating.

Another experiment in flavour - I made lemon pudding one night, and decided on a whim to see what that would do. The lemon-white chocolate mix worked out, but unfortunately the lemon pudding was quite dense, and made these babies a LITTLE hard to eat for something so small and light-looking. Don't get me wrong - they've been well and truly demolished by now, but next time I'll go with a lighter fluffier recipe.

These ones were directly inspired by http://www.bakerella.com/hamm-and-potatoes/, who was directly inspired by Disney's http://family.go.com/disney/pkg-disney-character-fun/pkg-disney-pixar-toy-story/

Mine certainly didn't go as successfully - in America coloured chocolate melts must be readily available, but here I could only find baby pink or baby blue, neither of which was the colour I needed. So I made this colour myself from a mix of milk and white chocolate melts, and that ended up with the mix being really thick and difficult to dip in - unsure why. Either way, I got this one cute fellow and a whole lot of m&ms and tic tacs to fill the void.

Last but not least, this happy little bunch of original chocolate pop/bites.

Well, some of them are happy. One of them is so lax about life that he’s sound asleep. But one of them, one of them isn’t sure he likes where this is going….

I think he smells a rat. Almost looks like he might cry as he watches Trina approaching…

His worst fears have come to light!! There’s no escaping now……

And it’s over.

Not to worry – no cake bites were wasted in the making of this blog.