Chocolate-Peanut Butter "Happy Birthday" cookie sammiches for Marita!

These were a fun choice! We here at the Bud had a friend coping with the idea of blowing through another year of life, so we thought “Hey, two things that help humans cope: Chocolate + Peanut Butter. Add the two together and you got yourself a party! Well really there was already a party in the works so we think that these might have just helped promote the joy that the cornucopia of deeelicious Chicken wings and cheese dip had already started to circulate. Moving along! 

Your Ingredient/ Tools List 

Cookies:

1 ¾ cups All Purpose Flour

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp kosher salt

½ cup + 1/3 cup powdered sugar

½ cup + 1 Tbsp (packed) dark brown sugar

6 Tbsp (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

½ cup creamy peanut butter

½ cup vegetable oil

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

1 large egg

1 1/3 cups (or about 8 oz) milk chocolate chips

Filling:

 3 oz good quality milk chocolate (I used Lindt!)

¼ cup creamy peanut butter

2 Tbsp powdered sugar

¼ tsp kosher salt

6 Tbsp whipping cream

 Tools:

Mixer
(having this tool is necessary, try mixing peanut butter and brown sugar by hand and you’ll hate yourself for trying to be inventive…)

Spatula

2 or 3 large baking sheets or large pans

Parchment Paper

Sooo I know it seems like a lot, but if you like to cook regularly you’ll have most of this stuff on hand, and if not in my opinion having good vanilla extract and chocolate on hand is always a plus!!

 

Start by making your filling, this needs to chill for at least an hour so that its stiff enough to spread later.

 

Put the quality chocolate, peanut butter, powdered sugar, and salt in a medium sized bowl. Then take a small sauce pan and start to heat up your whipping cream. When you start to see it boil, making sure it doesn’t burn… pour this over the contents of the bowl and mix to melt and combine. Once slightly cooled you can put this in the fridge.

Now for the cookies!!

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and line your baking sheets with parchment (this just makes clean up easy, and helps prevent sticking – but you already knew that, right!)

Take the first four ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt) and mix to combine in a medium bowl; set aside. Now grab your mixer and put in the powdered sugar, dark brown sugar, and room temp butter; mix to blend.

 

Now add in your peanut butter and mix until its creamy and wonderous! 

 

Gradually add in your vegetable oil and vanilla extract, and then mix in your egg. 

 

Now you can take this off of the mixer and either transfer to another bowl, or if your mixing bowl is big enough you can add your dry ingredients that were set aside earlier, and the chocolate chips. 

 

You don’t want to over mix so do this by hand with a spatula and only until incorporated.

 

You can now start to take level Tablespoon measurements and place them on the parchment paper lined cookie sheets. Be sure to space them well enough apart so they have room to grow a little. The recipe I used called for an inch and a half space between each but I never really know what that means or how you’re going to make a batch of cookies with only like 3 on the entire baking sheet so here’s how I spaced them!

 

Now they go into the oven for 12 minutes. When they are done let them cool for at least 5 minutes or so before transferring them off the metal (hot) surface because they are really soft and light at first.

 

I doubled this recipe because I figured what’s the point of going through the trouble if you’re only going to make a couple cookies. This recipe makes about two and a half dozen (30) cookie sandwiches after completion. I figured what the heck, 60 sammiches couldn’t hurt right! Now we’re talking!!

 

So when the cookies are cooled you can take your filling back out of the fridge, grab a butter knife and start to spread a dollop (the recipe suggests about a teaspoon I just plopped some on and went with it), take another cookie and put it on the other end. VOILA! Here’s what we got in the end!

 Happy Birthday Marita, and Thanks for giving us here at Tastebud a great excuse to eat delicious junk!

Turkey Day Pictorial

First there's Joy, and then it seeps into the food, and then we eat it, and then it emanates from our bellies back into the immediate atmosphere, creating a free for all frenzy of good times and loverly-ness. Enjoy.

Salmon Broccoli and Leek Breakfast Quiche

Straight from the Garden! Pickled Okra and Peppers (1st pic), and Watermelon Rind (2nd Pic, Left)

Mixed Olive Tapenade Fixings... Beeeeaaautimus!

Homemade Mixed Olive Tapenade (also pictured above on the right, extra for dipping!)

Tomato/Tapenade Gallette (made with puff pastry and Mozzarella!)

 "Green Sauce" Maybe a loose pesto if you will (pre-simmer)

Sauteed with local Coastal North Carolina Shrimp

A Moment of your time Please:

1) If you've never had FRESH seafood OR 

2) If you've only had "FRESH" seafood from the tourist traps of Florida ---sorry Floridians but selling "frozen" as "fresh" with the water right outside your door is JUST PLAIN WRONG, OR

3) You live in a land-locked town, AND

4) You are not allergic to shellfish, AND! 

If your reasoning for not liking seafood is "just because" let me just say this: 

You've never tasted the real thing. A-Good GAWD.

Fresh Spinach Salad with Marinated Shitakes

Roasted Beet and Citrus Salad with Goat Cheese

Sauteed Kale and Raisins

Brussels Sprouts in Mustard Glaze

Pistachio Dressing

Roasted Butternut Squash, Crab, and Brie Soup

 

Wild Mushroom Mix

Sauteed for Sesame Mushroom Bread Pudding

 Of course, Your Favorite, Your Friend.... GUMBO

Garlic Bread for Gumbo Dipping and Sopping (if you're from across the lake this is substituted for a heaping scoop of Potato Salad, or Sweet Potato Pie... Yes, you read that delicious decadence CORRECTLY.

 

Roast Beast!

You know what deliciousness that is... MMM!

Homemade Cranberry Chutney (that canned stuff is blasphemous)

Pumpkin Dessert Bread, Made at a local Star, NC Bakery

A piece of Chocolate Pine Nut Crostata

What little was left of the Pecan Pie

Finally, what is a festivity without homemade Sangria? Anyone feel like having Thanksgiving again tomorrow?


P.S. A little of what creativity was hatched at a Creole-Middle Eastern Household for a small gathering on Turkey Day and the description...

 Roasted Turkey Breast in Fresh Garlic/Parsley Butter Paste; with Roasted Potato, Sweet Potato, Onion, and Carrot in a Cranberry/Rosemary Butter Paste, and Dinner Roll Biscuits made from "Bujas" which are Veggies fried in a special Indian Spiced Batter...

Oh what the imagination can do for you!!!! Eat on my friends, Eat On....

What the hell have we been doing!?

Sooooo first lets start with an official APOLOGY.

Dear Adoring Public,

We here at The Bud do hereby sincerely apologize with the utmost sincerity of the sincerest of natures. We do realize that we have been gone from public view for quite a while now, and cannot expect you to forgive us or dash the desire to throw rotten tomatoes our way. We do, however, hope to offer you some comfort in saying that most of our adventures in the culinary aspect have completely BLOWN disastrously and think that maybe with the help of some pictured proof, you can have a laugh or three at our expense.

Sincerely,

TasteBud.blogspot.com

Go ahead, have a gander, CHEERS!

Sometime after our last entry we here at The Bud felt enormously adventurous and decided to take a stab at making a French Strawberry Tart. We should point out that when we say “French” we have in fact learned that this simply just means “REALLY HARD” and realized we had to break it down into many scary steps but decided to remain positive … and….. we remained positive until….. it was no longer possible. Which was very quick.

The first part of this was preparing the pastry shell. You wouldn’t think this would be too bad having played with flour in some varying fashions but lets just say that baking is kept a secret for a reason. Those who learn it properly and master it usually have worked so hard that they simply reserve the right to refuse to teach you simply because they feel all the spoils should go to them for having put themselves through hell…. And I quite frankly think I agree. This particular crust has lots of sugar in it, which means that you can’t really touch it. You can’t really touch it because it gets soft REALLY FREAKING FAST, and yet you are supposed to find a way to roll it out and mold it to it’s tart pan, while still looking pretty. Looks normal doesn't it? Yeah, I could stand it on it's side....

Too much flour from the get-go. Hard as a rock. Start over.

 Then there was the correction in measurements (did you know that “sifted” means “less than” ? Yeah. Me either.) And the realization that “knead your dough” meant “Touch it barely once, don’t even wink at it, and then cross your fingers and hope for the best. You won’t find out until hours later whether you’ve made it right or not.”

That's waaaaay too much touching right there. Waaay.

Another day later Success, I pulled the dough out of the fridge and to my delight, it was not quite a rock, Sweet!

But of course after touching it for more than 1 minute it was too soft to roll out and I started to have hate in my heart….

Feeling anxious and adamant about the whole stupid thing I took my dumb soft dough, shoved it in the freezer for another hour. Fearing the repetition of aggravation I hastily rolled this fickle little princess of a dough like a mad woman not caring if it was the ugliest little baby in the orphanage and shoved it as quickly as possible into the tart pan. SUCCESS!!?!

On to another whole slew of problematic situations!

Despite poking holes with a fork into the tart before shoving it in the oven and weighing it down with rice, there were bubbles. 

It was brittle after removing it from the oven so one of the sides had a blemish.

I was supposed to make a sort of jam glaze by cooking down some red currant jam using a candy thermometer to gauge the temperature in search for it’s end point, which never came before burning because my candy thermometer upon FIRST USE appeared to be broken…

(I couldn’t even find red currant jam, so apricot was the substitute, which I had; however, this one in particular had fruit bits that burned on the bottom of the pan… it was fun scrubbing that out.)

Then there was the custard, which only after the fact mentioned that this part should have been done the day before so that it could cool completely over night in the fridge before assembling and baking. Sooo that sequence occurred incorrectly.

And in the wee hours of the morning waiting on custard to form is fun but seems to take forever as your arm feels like it’s about to fall off from all of the tough stirring… “stick it out! keep going!” I chanted.

And in a desperate attempt to be free of this whole fiasco I simply filled it with the warm custard, cut up my strawberries and placed them on top throwing presentation out the window in hopes that at least it would taste good.

….. Sorta pretty, but not particularly so tasty…. Oh well.

About a week later, maybe first week of October, we tried making a most delicious 4 hour (minimum) Pork Rib Gauzetto sauce that abruptly ended half way through when an act of the devil befell us.

This started out with a loverly large batch of homemade Vegetable broth…

Tedious Mushroom Soaking …

Followed by LOTS of chopping….

Deeelicious Country Rib Browning…. YAY PORK!!

Veggie Sautee-ing ….

Wine adding…

And juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust right before the lid was supposed to go on for the long haul final simmer… there was this:

Sheer terror. Yes, folks a large light bulb cover/ orb--- whatever the crap you call it (at least a foot in diameter just above, and to the left of where the pots simmer) decided to commit suicide from the ceiling to the floor and glass shattered for miles. There was glass in the form of tiny little shards as far as the other end of the kitchen floor. It was on the window sill right above the pot, it was on top of the microwave, it was even in our hair…..

Awe, Shock, Terror, and Tears ensued quickly.

Next there was this crap…. Which tasted really yummy but looked terrible! In attempt to use what we had lying around in our kitchen we here at the bud used some most loverly Cavatelli and found some cauliflower, mushrooms, and clams… sounds good right!?! Well it was…… it just wasn’t very pretty. For a prettier finish I probably should have seared and then roasted the cauliflower and mushrooms but who the crap has time for that when you’re STARVING? I didn’t. This is the delicious-ugliness I got in the end.

Then we trudged back into the depths of that Pork Rib Gauzetto taking caution to avoid the devil and his minions … it was a success and we simply tossed it with pasta.

But then we tried to make a side which is normally very simple, and of course the devil managed to weasel is way back in via lemon rind pith! What a jerk that guy is. Simple pan fried brussels sprouts are delicious with a little sautéed garlic and red pepper flake, about 12 minutes in the pan and they are done. But this fine recipe called for what appeared to be a most deeelicious lemon sauce. And having avoided this lengthy extra step in the past I decided what the heck, lets give it a whirl.

You know, you learn through these processes that sometimes an explanation in a book or over the phone simply isn’t enough. I, like some of us, often need to be shown to avoid those pesky pit falls and this was one of those times I fell right into the crevasse.

Looks delicious doesn’t it. Too bad what tiny little bit of lemon pith that was left on the simmering rinds provided for a MOST bitter experience, ruining what would have been some quick and simple but truly yum-tastic brussels sprouts. What a shame.

Finally our luck here at TB started to flop and twitch back to life a little…. There was funtimes at Oktoberfest in the mountains of Helen, GA. We’ll just put a picture or two of these little guys to symbolize what deliciousness I was too greedy to wait and take a picture of before eating.

Then there was Halloween spent with two loverly little ones and a couple of witch/bumblebee/Chowder (he lives on!) costumes….

And finally a means of possible celebration which I will not mention in fear of jinxing what has been a very lengthy, drawn out, anxiety ridden month from a hell of mixed feelings, hence the entirety of November.

Keeping it cheap and Nasty yesssssss! (more fun that way, builds character, right?)

Anyway--- in closing, we here at TB hope that all of these random explanations, excuses, and screw ups, make up for the fact that we abandoned you for so long, please forgive us!!!

Up next is a Thanksgiving Pictorial of some of the delights we made and ate so stay tuned!

We're Back Fools !!