Tropical peanut butter cookies

What do you think about when you think about tropical?

Coco-loco... that is, coconut!

Now look at them, at those little beauties with a criss-cross pattern on top

what, you don't see any difference between them and a regular PB cookie? oh well, the difference is in the inside! and its name is...

Coconut peanut butter! which is nothing else but butter made of peanuts and coconut...

 

As you can see, the texture is not the same as in regular peanut butter, actually it's a bit hard to work with when it's at room temperature. But if you heat it up for a bit... you smell heaven... a mixture between regular PB smell and the bliss of coconut scent which got transformed into delicious cookies. 

Now, if you don't have access to coconut peanut butter or just don't want to buy it (i got mine as part of a prize i won on a blog), I bet adding a bit of coconut oil, coconut cream or coconut milk to the regular peanut butter cookie recipe does the trick. Try it! It's a great flavor combination that your taste buds need to explore. 

1/2 cup coconut peanut butter

1/4 cup regular peanut butter (for softness and more fat)

1/2 cup butter

1 1/2 cups of flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 F

Cream the butters and sugar together until creamy and smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Add the flour mixing well with a spatula. You should be able to roll the dough into balls with your hands without it sticking. (I used a 1/2 tablespoon measure to scoop out the dough). 

Once you have your round and shiny balls, make the criss-cross pattern on them... why? I don't know, for fun or for good looks... 

Bake for 10 min or until set. 

Enjoy, lick your fingers, taste that hint of coconut and fall in love with it... 

Peanut butter swirl brownies

How good does that sound? Well, I'm just gonna tell you we ate it paired with fantastic vanilla ice cream with crunchy clusters...

I intensely searched the net to find a good recipe for this. Most of the ones I found, complained about how the brownies came out dry on the peanut butter swirl part. Mostly, because the swirl was plain peanut butter, nothing added. So when baked, it just dries out.  Finally Good Housekeeping had an answer for me! Adding egg to the peanut butter swirl! The egg moistens the peanut butter and the swirl comes out with pretty much the same texture as the brownie.

WARNING! this is not a low calorie recipe, believe me, you don't want to make these if you're on a diet.

For the brownie

1 cup butter
1 cup dark brown sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

For the peanut butter swirl

1 cup creamy peanut butter
1/3 cup sugar
4 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg

Preheat oven to 350 F

Melt butter and cool down. Add sugar and vanilla, mix well and incorporate the eggs one at a time. In a separate bowl mix flour and cocoa powder until the mixture is homogeneous. Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture once third at a time.

Prepare the peanut butter swirl by mixing all the ingredients until well combined.

By tablespoons, add the brownie mixture and the peanut butter mixture in a greased pan. Bake for 45 min or until a toothpick comes out with moist crumbs.

It's peanut butter-jelly time!

There's a bunch of foods that I've discovered ever since I moved to the US, of them, cranberries and peanut butter won my heart at first bite...

Our roommate left to the west coast leaving 3!!! jars of peanut butter and an amazing jar of blackberry jam for the rest of roomies to enjoy... so... it's peanut butter jelly time!

What better for our gathering at my coworker's place than PB and jelly cupcakes? The idea for the recipe came from sugar plum. I omitted the frosting because of the transportation issues and I made my babies on mini cupcake cups.

Don't they look delicious? they were a little more on the pie than on the cupcake side, but the taste was definitely amazing...

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter, softened
2 tablespoons creamy peanut butter
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup milk

1/2 cup blackberry jam

Preheat the oven at 350 F.

In a bowl mix together flour, baking powder and salt.  In another bowl mix together softened butter, peanut butter and brown sugar. Believe it or not, I didn't even use the hand mixer, I mixed it with a whisk. Add eggs, previously beaten, and vanilla. Mix until combined. Slowly alternate adding 1/3 cup milk and 1/2 cup of flour.

Place a tablespoon of the batter on the bottom of each cupcake tin. Add a tablespoon of jam/jelly on top. Cover the jelly with another tablespoon of batter. Be careful not to overfill, my first batch was on the 'too full' side and the cupcakes looked not so pretty.

Bake for about 12 minutes, until golden.

As I said, the top was a little on the pie side, but the middle was moist, fluffy and delicious