I’ve never been much of a fan of peanut butter. Well, of like a PB+J sandwich. It’s good in baking and cooking, and I definitely like Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups, but just peanut butter…. eh, take it or leave it. Almond butter. Cashew butter. Even Walnut butter (though it is hard to find). Those I prefer more. At any rate, I thought I would make buckeyes, but thought I would put a twist on them and made them with almond butter instead. And sea salt. Love sea salt!
World Nutella Day is coming up tomorrow. Yeah, there is such a thing: World Nutella Day. I’m not making it up. And while I guess that someone at the Ferrero Roche company might object to me calling this homemade hazelnut chocolate spread Nutella, it is more or less the same thing, eh? So there you have it: make your own to celebrate the day!
Getting to be Valentine’s Day so I thought that I would start putting up some ideas, in case you wanted to make something for your sweetheart. First up this year are these lovely gems. Overload on the chocolate with dipping and pecans as well. These are small (used a 3 inch cookie cutter) but pack great flavor. Easy to make too!
The very first thing that you will notice about these cookies is the smell. Open the container or parcel that they are in and the glorious smell of coconut is almost overwhelming, in an amazingly delicious kind of way. Coconut overload. They are crunchy, with the soft bits of coconut sort of weaved though. The chocolate is just a bonus, but makes them pretty over-the-top, if you ask me.
Here’s a quick and easy recipe that I threw together… ok, I actually threw it together twice, because I made both a raspberry version and a lemon curd version. These two shortbread bars are actually very similar — identical until the top part, actually. I wanted to show how versatile this recipe is, and that it is super super easy to make. Start to finish in under an hour, though they do take a while to cool. I made 12 oblong bars out of each (4 x 3 cut), but you could do 4 x 4 so they are almost cookie-sized.