August 16, 2013

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cookies


Do you feel like soft, chocolatey, peanutty melt-in-your-mouth cookies?  Yeah, me too.  Here's the perfect recipe.
Recipe Adapted From: Scientifically Sweet
Ingredients
125g butter
185g brown sugar
63g white sugar
1/4 cup peanut butter (crunchy or smooth, your pick)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla essence/extract
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
250g flour
20g cocoa powder
150g choc chips



Method
1. Preheat the oven to 175 C (350 F).

2. Cream the butter with both sugars until light and fluffy.  Add peanut butter and beat until combined.

3. Add the egg and vanilla, mix until combined.

4. Add the bicarb, flour and cocoa powder and fold in.

5. Add the chocolate chips and mix.


6. Roll the dough into balls the size of your choosing (I did mine a bit smaller than a tablespoon) and place onto a tray covered in baking paper or a silicone sheet.  They don't spread much, so you can put them quite close together.



7. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until the tops of the cookies start getting cracks.  Don't overbake them, or they'll lose the softness of their insides.

8. After the cookies have cooled on the tray for a bit, transfer them to a wire rack and enjoy.



August 2, 2013

Moist Banana Bread with choc chips and pecans


Ahh, bananas.  To tell the truth, I don't like to eat them on their own and my brother absolutely loathes them.  Occasionally, however, my grandmother guiltily hands me a few brown-spotted soft bananas and mumbles something about baking, and I sigh but I do what I must.  What I must do is bake banana bread.  In the past, the recipe I've used is this one; but my Mum requested 'moist banana bread' so, as a dutiful daughter, I consulted Google and Google brought forth this recipe to me.

Boy, is it a winner.  The other recipe is definitely quicker and easier to make, but the extra couple of steps for this one are definitely worth it.  Moist, check; delicious, check; my banana-hating brother will eat it, check.

Recipe adapted from: The Redhead Riter
Ingredients - 11 x 21 cm (4 x 8 inch) loaf
125g butter
250g white sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
255g flour
1 tsp bicarb soda
1/2 tsp sale
2 ripe/overripe bananas
1/2 cup sour cream
60g pecans
1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional)

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 175 C (350 F).  Beat butter and sugar until creamy.

2. Add eggs one at a time, beating between each addition.  Add vanilla and mix in.

3. Add the flour, bicarb soda and salt to the batter and mix gently until combined.

4. Mash the bananas with a fork then add them to the batter along with the sour cream.  Mix until combined.

5. Add the pecans and chocolate chips to the batter and combine.  The chocolate chips aren't in the original recipe, but I am guilty of adding chocolate to everything.

6. Pour the batter into a loaf tin lined with baking paper and bake for about 1.5 hours or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.  The top of the banana bread will go quite brown, but mine didn't burn at all, so don't worry!



7. Cool the banana bread in the tin and then consume at your leisure.  Mum likes to spread butter on it, but it's beautiful on its own as well!