Sometimes you just need an overload of peanut, which is exactly what you are going to get with these cookies: peanuts x3, in the form of peanut butter, peanut butter chips and actual roasted peanut. Oh, and strawberry jammie bits, which make them sort of like having a sandwich, minus the bread. There’s oats in here too, so I guess they are healthy [wink wink].
It’s getting to be St. Patrick’s Day is a few weeks time and while I am in no way Irish, I do live in Boston, so the town is full of faux-Irish, as it were. And as with any holiday, it is just a good excuse to make something sort of, somehow related to that holiday. So I made these truffles. OK, I probably didn’t need to put the green nonpareils on there, but they are to distract you from the not-so-good look of the truffles themselves. They taste great, but I am not very talented with the whole “dipping in chocolate” part.
A few weeks ago, a friend asked me if I could make “Energy/Protein Bars that don’t break the bank”. A box of 12 of the kind that he likes costs $25, which is $2.08 per bar. To be honest, I didn’t think that it was possible, and this experiment pretty much proved it: cost per bar ended up at $1.88, not including my time. Nuts, dried fruit, coconut butter, cocoa powder and nibs … all very pricey. I could probably bring the price down for 10 or 15 cents if I bought in huge volumes / bulk, but seeing this was an experiment, I went with normal sized purchases. Also, never having made energy bars before (and to be honest, I never really even thought about making them before now), I didn’t know how they would turn out, or if he would like them. If you like energy bars, these are pretty good. If you are “eh” on the topic of energy bars, you might not like them. I think that they are “good not great”.
Recipe 1000. One thousand. A one with three zeros after it. Wow. Ugh. Holy Cow. That’s a lot of food. Yes, this French-style Apple Custard Tart marks the 1000th recipe on this here website. I had wanted to hit 1000 at the 4 years mark, but I am a few weeks late. Oh well. I have a day job afterall.
This tart uses the smallest Pink Lady Apples that I have ever seen. They were really only about 2 inches in diameter. They were even sold as mini apples. You could, of course, use “normal sized apples” but as I had these, I used these instead. Note that this tart isn’t overly sweet, so if you are an “a la mode” person, definitely scoop on the ice cream!