Old-Fashioned Chocolate Pie (aka Minny's Chocolate Pie)

I read. A lot. So much that my house is currently overflowing with books, most of which live in cardboard boxes stacked to the ceiling. And that doesn't even count the books I left at my parents' house when I moved (much to their chagrin), which would easily double, if not triple, my collection. But I can't help it -- I love reading. But it got to the point where my husband put his figurative foot down and said that we couldn't possibly fit any more books in our house without the whole structure collapsing in on itself, creating some sort of biblio-singularity which would punch a hole in the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe. Maybe not his exact words, but that was the general gist. However, being my husband, he came up with an elegant alternative: a brand new iPad with Kindle and Nook apps on them, and a gift card to Amazon. That was about a year and a half ago, and I have since become an e-book convert (although it took me a few days to get used to reading on a screen). I have 60+ books on my iPad already, because buying them when I have a whim to read or see something interesting is way too easy.

But why do I bring this up on a baking blog? Well, it just so happens that the very first e-book I downloaded was The Help by Kathryn Stockett. And in this book is a pivotal plot point which I won't spoil here, but it involves a chocolate pie. Minny's chocolate pie to be exact.

When the movie came out, I had my first good look at the movie-interpretation of said pie, and I was surprised to discover that it was not a chocolate cream pie like I had been imagining. It was some sort of baked confection, looking almost like a brownie pie, and I was intrigued. A year and a half later, on a whim, I google "Minny's chocolate pie recipe" and out pops this page -- the screen-used recipe for Minny's pie! Not only did it sound delicious, it sounded almost too easy, so I had to give it a whirl. And thank goodness I did!

Peanut Butter Pie (No Bake)

Here is an incredibly easy no-bake dessert that is great if you need a quick holiday treat: No Bake Peanut Butter Pie. It has few ingredients, and is a snap to put together! It has peanut butter, Hershey's Kisses, cream cheese and Cool Whip, all in a graham cracker crust. Pretty simple!

I have the original recipe from a "Hershey's Holiday Favorites" mini-mag from 2004, but it can also be found online here. I tweaked it just a bit, to be more peanut buttery!

Peanut Butter Blossoms

My mom and I have been making peanut butter blossoms for years at Christmastime. It is a well-known and well-loved recipe which came originally from Crisco, although my mom and I slightly modified the recipe to exclude...well...the Crisco. Instead of the butter-flavored shortening that the original calls for, we just use regular butter in a 1 to 1 swap. This doesn't work in every recipe, because while shortening is 100% fat, butter is only about 80% or so fat. However, for these cookies, a 1 to 1 swap of butter for shortening works fine, because of the added fat of the peanut butter. You can use crunchy or creamy peanut butter, but make sure it isn't reduced fat.

Quick and Dirty Creepy Treats: Easy Halloween Food Ideas

Now that October is here, I'll still be posting Autumn-themed stuff, obviously, but I also wanted to get started on some Halloween-themed posts. So, for the next 4 weeks, my posts will be Halloween-centric with some smatterings of Halloween history and lore thrown into each post.

For this post, I am dusting off some really old ideas and pics (I was notoriously bad about documenting my creations before I became a blogger) of quick and easy Halloween treats that come together in a snap but are super fun to do. These treats are collected from ones that I and my friend Lauren made years ago when our lab hosted our Department's Halloween Social. Everyone in my lab pitched in and made Fall and/or Halloween-themed desserts, and this post is dedicated to just a few of them, the "quick and dirty" treats, to borrow a phrase we use often in lab. They are not very sophisticated, but they are cute and easy, and would make a great starting point for brainstorming new Halloween treats. These are all great ideas especially if you want something to do with little kids, because they are all decorating-oriented and not oven-oriented. For this post, we have quick Witch Hats, Critters, Ghosts, and Dirt. Unfortunately, I made these a while ago, so I don't have pictures of intermediate steps, but the directions are straightforward so this shouldn't be a problem. To be honest, they are so simple that, in most cases, you can just figure out how to assemble them from the pictures!

Peanut Butter Cookie Perfection

Peanut butter is basically my favorite thing. Don't get me wrong, I love other desserts too, and I won't always go for the peanut butter option depending on my mood, but peanut butter is pretty much a sure thing for me in terms of enjoyment. And, PB cookies are my fiance's absolute favorite (much to my chagrin, he is not a sweet tooth, and rarely eats what I bake, so the opportunity to make something he'll eat is also a huge motivating factor). So, needless to say, I have been looking around forever for a peanut butter cookie recipe. A great recipe. A recipe that is a bold, yet traditional PB cookie. All of the cookies I've tried are not peanut buttery enough, or the consistency is wrong, or they don't have the right color/look. Up until now, my efforts have been in vain. But then I spied, on Bakerella's blog (where else?), a peanut butter cookie recipe. And the thing that caught my eye was the ingredients list -- there were only 3 primary ingredients, and none of them was flour!

Could it be true? Could the answer to the perfect peanut butter cookie really be so simple? I couldn't wait to find out, so I tried the recipe, detemined to make a Valentine's Day gift to Charlie out of them if they turned out well. And...they did...oh, they did.

Peanut Butter, Nutella, Cashews, Oh My! (aka My Quest for Viable Wedding Favors)

My wedding is December 6, 2009, but I am a notorious early planner, and right now I am trying to work out wedding favor details. My fiance and I are making a charitable donation to the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation in the names of our guests, which is technically in lieu of favors -- but I still want people to take home a little something. My friend Lauren did something similar at her wedding (donation to a youth reading program) and she made peanut butter balls for her guests. I didn't want to do the same thing, so I have been wracking my brain to come up with a small homemade edible favor that 1) can be made relatively easily and cheaply; 2) can be made in bulk; 3) can survive the freezer for 3 weeks to a month; and 4) can survive being left at room temp uncovered (favor boxes aren't exactly airtight) for about 3-4 days.

The first thing I thought of were traditional chocolate truffles -- ganache dipped in chocolate. But I was iffy about leaving them at room temp for 4 days. Even though, as a microbiologist, I know that there is probably enough sugar in the truffles to make them inhospitable to microbes, I have always been iffy about dairy products at room temp, so I decided to leave this well enough alone.

I thought maybe chocolate-covered brownies would be the thing, and they stood up well to being frozen, but even though they were enrobed in chocolate, the edges got slightly stale when I was testing them at room temp.

I finally came back to nut butter balls, but because my friend did peanut butter, I decided to try it with Nutella instead. I found a slightly different peanut butter ball recipe courtesy of the internet and I have made it with Nutella and peanut butter so far. Both were great (especially the Nutella -- better than Roche's in my opinion), and I bought a jar of cashew butter to try as well -- I am pretty sure it will work with any nut butter, and I'd like to try some others like macadamia nut butter, which is available online. Although, for favor purposes, I think Nutella and peanut butter are the only two nut butters that would be cost effective. The recipe breaks down like this:

2 C nut butter of your choice
2 C crushed graham crackers
2 C confectioner's sugar
2 C butter
chocolate of your choice for dipping -- I actually used the Wilton dark chocolate candy melts because they set up nicely and melt easily -- I don't want to mess around if I need to have a high-output production of nut butter balls
Then you just combine everything but the chocolate, scoop it into 1-inch balls and place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment, and chill for an hour. Then melt the chocolate and dip.

Admittedly, dipping is where I need the greatest amount of practice, because some of the balls looked great, but some looked like they had been dipped by chimpanzees. So I have decided that I will make a large batch for this Christmas, for cookie exchanges and other holiday get-togethers, so I can practice.

I've also started thinking about packaging. I'd like to have a small box of the balls at each place setting for each person, but since my guest list is going to be 180-200 ppl, I have decided to put 2 balls in a box per person. They are pretty big, that should be plenty. So the boxes I need are more rectangular than square (I have been keeping some balls in my fridge for size estimates while I check out suitable boxes), but I envision the packaging as looking something like this picture to the right. My colors are dark blue, white and silver, so I envision a white rectangle box with a dark blue ribbon like this. I am thinking an oval label would be a nice contrast, I just want to make sure that the label is big enough for a short message -- I want to tell people about the donation on the label.

I have determined that a 3"X 2 1/4" X 1 3/4" box worked great for the 2 truffles, but now I am having a problem finding those boxes :-( Good thing I am starting early...