Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge Drops

Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge Drops

This is a variation on my original Chocolate Almond Fudge Drops, but using my favorite peanut butter instead.  My son's teacher requested a "healthy treat" for his class' Valentine's Day party and since I know there are no kids with peanut allergies in his class and that usually kids are more familiar with and willing to eat peanut versus almond butter, I thought I would give these cookies a try.  I do think the consistency of the all natural organic peanut butter make these a little less fudgy and a bit more grainy, but the flavor is perfect. You could easily experiment with the ratio of ingredients and increase the cocoa and sugar (like I did once with the almond variety) to intensify that aspect of the flavor.  The possibilities really are endless.  But one thing is for sure- they are quick, simple, and delicious.  Hopefully his classmates all agree!

Inside Out Peanut Butter Cups

Inside Out Peanut Butter Cups

My favorite candy, besides creamy extra dark chocolate, is definitely a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Although I do not often let myself indulge in the original version, the combination of chocolate and peanut butter will always be a go to dessert flavor of mine. I recently came across a super simplified peanut butter cookie recipe that called for one cup each of peanut butter and sugar, mixed with one egg... which became my inspiration for the Chocolate Almond Fudge Drops I recently posted. I wanted to try the original version as well, but I can never keep anything simple, so of course I put my own spin on them and turned them into these marvelous delights.  While a peanut butter cup is mostly chocolate and processed peanut butter, these treats are mostly all natural organic peanut butter (and of course sugar) with just a touch of dark chocolate inside.  So while still being a dessert, they have some healthy protein, some nutritious flax seed and therefore, in my opinion, make an excellent after dinner indulgence.

What NOT to Make for Breakfast

I like to pride myself on the fact that I do not often waste any food.  Although I know I spend more than the average American does on groceries, since I buy a large amount of organic produce in addition to expensive items like nuts, seeds and dark chocolate, I know that everything I buy eventually gets consumed. I plan my weekly meals around leftovers, am constantly checking dates on everything I buy so as not to let anything go bad, and besides the very occasional piece of rotten produce, I throw out next to nothing.  I am always eating the last few bites off of my children’s plates, saving little bits of everything to be eaten later, and whenever I bake, I channel my great grandmother’s influence and insist on scraping the bowl of batter completely clean so as not to waste even one bite.  I value my food and I hate to see anything edible go uneaten.

This past weekend, however, I had to give in.  With all the experimentation I do in my kitchen, not often repeating a recipe twice, it is amazing that I have not had more failures than I have.  Usually, even if something doesn’t turn out quite right, it still gets eaten, whether it is a pan of brownies that will not hold it’s shape and becomes a topper for ice cream, or the extremely dark chocolate birthday cake I made three years ago for my daughter’s 2^nd birthday that actually tasted bitter (it was ok if you ate every bite with some frosting and my chocolate loving daughter had no trouble finishing her giant piece).  But the meals I cooked up for breakfast yesterday and today were a different story.

In my defense, these were recipes largely based on ones published in magazines, so someone, somewhere, thought they were good.  I did make some subtle changes, adding in organic whole grains, extra cinnamon, different fruit and nut combinations, etc… but nothing that could place the blame solely on my cooking techniques.  I must say, my husband is a trooper and despite realizing either initially or after a few bites that what I had placed before him was actually pretty unsatisfying, he ate a large portion of each of these recipes while we both had a good laugh and I threw my meal away.

I have included the two recipes below, in case anyone wants to try something I wouldn’t recommend or thinks they know of a more edible method of preparing versions of them.  The first is a recipe for a twist on a carrot cake muffin using beets instead of shredded carrot.  I have never been a fan of beets and these muffins smell and taste like beets. My husband likes beets which is why I think he was able to eat two of these muffins and asked me to save them in the freezer “just in case” (I didn’t).  Maybe there isn’t enough sugar or cinnamon or the usual raisins and coconut that is found in carrot cake, but I just found them to be gross.  Beautiful to look at, extremely light and moist, and completely unpleasant tasting.  Both of my kids took one bite and looked as if they were going to die.  I felt really bad and of course gave them something else immediately.

The second recipe, which was this morning’s disaster and the inspiration for this more comedic blog post, is one that I have heard mentioned on TV shows, in numerous magazines and even on the package of quinoa itself.  It is a breakfast cereal creation in the style of oatmeal but using the highly nutritious grain quinoa instead of oats.  Sounds simple enough, but the flavor of the quinoa, and the smell, does not go well with blueberries, lemon and cinnamon.  As my husband so nicely commented while eating more than half of his large bowl (I ate about 4 bites total), “quinoa is not a breakfast food.”  I have to agree, unless you are in the habit of eating savory dishes for breakfast, because although my husband has never liked quinoa in general, I have found it palatable as a rice substitute cooked with beans, onion, garlic and plenty of other strong savory spices. But as an oatmeal substitute?  Never again!!

So although my breakfasts these past few days have been tragic disappointments and I had to break my steadfast rule on wasting food and literally throw it all away, I do plan on redeeming myself later on this afternoon with a delicious batch of chocolate filled peanut butter fudge drops and a delicious pasta dish with homemade spinach pesto.  Here’s to hoping that those creations turn out well!!

Chocolate Almond Fudge Drops

Chocolate Almond Fudge Drops

This cookie is about as simple, and delicious, as you can get.  With only five, mostly healthy ingredients it is a no brainer to throw together and yet it tastes like something from a gourmet candy shop.  I got the inspiration from a recipe I found in Oprah magazine that listed just sugar, peanut butter and eggs as the ingredients and I plan to try a peanut butter version of this soon as well.  The cookies seem very gooey when they first come out of the oven, but they solidify nicely and can be stored in an air tight container in the fridge for days if they last that long.

* I made a double batch of these for a party a few weeks after the original post, but I didn't have quite enough almond butter... only about 1 2/3 cups instead of the 2 cups I needed.  So in order to thicken up the dough I added an additional 1/4 cup dark cocoa and 1/2 cup organic sugar.  They tasted just as amazing.