All the flavour of peanut butter in a flourless cookie

Crunchy, but soft on the inside. Crumbly and so so full of that creamy peanut butter flavour that you might just as well send around the jar and let everyone stick a spoon into it!

These cookies, adapted from Nicole at Baking Bites, are flourless. No flour - no problem. No problem whatsoever. If you honestly have never baked before or - honestly - have failed doing it every single time, then it's time to get your fingers dirty. You can lick them clean, afterwards, of course:)


I made the cookies for a friend who came for a visit. 'She'll be here in 15, I'll just quickly throw a batch of cookies into the oven' But...I did it faster.
According to what you like, you can add 2 dl of chocolate chips/chopped chocolate or some peanuts. Or you can add both.

Flourless peanut butter cookies (adapted from Baking bites, makes about 20) 180 g peanut butter 1 3/4 dl sugar 1 large egg 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (or other vanillla flavouring) 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/4 tsp salt (optional: 2 dl chocolate chips, peanuts) Preheat oven to 175C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or grease it with butter. Beat together all ingredients until smooth (add chocolate chips or peanuts at the end of mixing) Drop by tablespoonfuls onto the baking sheet and flatten slightly with a moistened finger. Bake about 10-13 minutes until golden brown at the edges. Cool on the baking sheet for some minutes, then cool on a rack completely.

I'd recommend a shorter baking time for a chewier cookie, but that's already up to you. If you love peanut butter, you'll never get lonely with these cookies around. As my friend was a bit late...I didn't get either...
Check the clock! Have 15 minutes? You know what to do!

Sweet bread puddings with condensed milk, peanut butter and plums

Making the Estonian bread pudding Saiavorm has certain rules for me.
It's half soft. It's half crunchy. It's got something with sour taste in it. It has sugar sprinkled on it. It is flavoured with vanilla (is there something that ISN'T flavoured with vanilla at this house?). Its top is golden brown. It's eaten with cold milk poured over it. Its serving size is really big just big enough to fill the belly.

But who actually cares? I may add berries, pears or even salted fish into my bread pudding if I want to (the salted fish was a metaphor, really). I do love to add some curd cheese, cream cheese, sour cream or yoghurt to the egg and milk mixture to make the lower part of the pudding taste more than just...divine tasting soaked bread. This time the quantity of bread is much smaller than usually as I used a muffin pan, but at the same time the dessert has a gourmet-like twist in taste. I'd call it progress, wouldn't you?:)


Sweet bread puddings with condensed milk, peanut butter and plums

100 g white bread
100 g plums (fresh/frozen)
1 tbsp peanut butter
3-4 tbsp sweetened condensed milk
1 1/4 dl milks
1 egg
1 yolk
vanilla
sugar for sprinkling

1. Chop the plums and divide the pieces between muffin pan holes (there's no need to melt frozen plums - they'll do just fone on their own).
2. Dice the bread and add to the plums.
3. Mix the rest of the ingredients (except sugar) together and pour onto bread.
4. Sprinkle the puddings with some sugar and bake at 190C until baked from the inside and golden brown on the top, circa 25 minutes.
5. Serve warm with cold milk.



The sweetness of the puddings comes from the condensed milk, but as there's not much of it, you may add sugar to taste. Peanut butter mysteriously makes the taste better from the background, it can't be noticed right away, but makes its every effort to improve your eating experience. And yes - half soft, half crunchy. Easy, it is, but someone should explain that to the cooks of the school diner too - there's so much more to saiavorm than just soaked bread (and they should know that for heaven's sake!).

I'm only worried about one thing. The only peanut butter that is sold in every bigger store here in Tallinn was peculiarly runny this time. There's nothing written about it on the jar, but if they're adding more oil to it now...
Argh.

Halva - a dessert that knows no limits

For me the definition of halva (or halvah, halava) has always been peanut halva. In Estonia these shiny packages with Ali Baba on them are known to everybody. We do have quality sesame halva too and even sunflower halva in little plastic bags that one can find in those little shops with questionable value on some streetcorner.
Yes, peanut halva. I remember spying on the biggest pieces when my mom used to cut it up for the family. Now I've been grabbing a knife when someone has bought a package to sneak some of it into a dessert or onto a cake. It's superb with apples. And berries. And curd cheese. And yoghurt.


Halva is a widespread dessert, but it's usually made of tahini (sesame paste) or semolina flour. It was about a year ago when I discovered an Indian recipe for carrot halva (my heart went 'ooh' and 'aah' at the same time) and began seeing all the opportunities: vegetables, seeds, nuts. Why not try beetroot halva?
In any case, halva is a very sweet dessert that's always served cold. Honey is a usual component, but different spices, raisins, syrups, pieces of nuts, vanilla etc can be added. I tried to find my own basic recipe for peanut halva. Although the final result is not exactly what I had hoped it to be, it makes a delicious dessert. I believe you could cheat a bit here by just using store-bought peanut butter.


Peanut halva with vanilla

140 g peanuts
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp honey
vanilla

1. Roast the peanuts on a dry skillet until golden brown.
2. Grind the peanuts and sugar to flour-like consistence (I used a coffee grinder as my food processor wouldn't have been good enough for the nuts to be finely ground).



3. Add honey and vanilla. Pulse in a food processor until the consistency is really smooth and the halva can be formed or has already formed a stiff ball.
4. Shape the halva to your liking, wrap it into plastic wrap and let it stand in the fridge for at least an hour before serving.



The finished dessert isn't as crumbly as the store-bought version, but tastes as good. It can be sliced easily: it won't fall apart or flatten. I believe the best way of serving it is indeed to just slice it. It's consistence is somewhere between crumbly and soft. The taste slightly reminds of peanut butter and that's probably because the amount of sugar added is smaller than usual. It may be just a bit sticky on the tongue. But the fingers! The feeling on my fingers after eating it was just like after eating store-bought halva, so it must be the real thing!

What next? I'd like to try adding syrup instead of sugar or just more sugar to make the halva harder. Heating up the whole thing after reaching smooth consistency is another idea: it would reduce the proportion of liquid and sugar in it would start to caramelise. Using cashews next time would be great. One day carrot halva has to be tried too, but that's already another day, another recipe and another story.

This post will be taking part in the event Monthly Mingle #9, this month's theme being Arabian Nights.

Like swimming in peanut butter

Before cheap jars of peanut butter appeared in our stores (and that was only tiny bits of time ago), I decided to give it a try and buy one (and definitely not the cheapest) good-looking foreign jar. A jar of creamy peanut butter, really full of taste. So, impressed by its content, I visited the jar with a little spoon quite often and finally scooped out every bit of it. Although about 1 1/4 cups of it went into this cake. Why eat just peanut butter when you can add a little something to it and feel like eating loads more peanut butter?



Peanut butter cheesecake
(adapted from Epicurious )

450 g cream cheese
1 1/4 cups creamy peanut butter
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup sour cream
3 eggs
vanilla
150 g chopped dark chocolate

1. Grease a springform pan or a ceramic baking pan (this is what I used). If you're using a springform pan, wrap it carefully with aluminum foil.
2. With an electric mixer, beat together cream cheese, peanut butter, sugar, sour cream and vanilla. Add the eggs, one at a time. Finally mix in chocolate and pour the batter into your baking pan.
3. Place the baking pan into a larger one, then fill the large pan with hot water so that it comes about half way up the sides of the smaller baking dish.
4. Bake the cake at 160C/325F for about an hour and cool it completely before serving.

Yes, the cake is very peanut buttery. Oh and cream cheesy, it's true. Although eating huge amounts of it sounds wonderful, you wouldn't want to do it. Small slices are already nicely rich and fill the belly enough. With a cup of coffee, on spring mornings like today? For me this cake is a reminder of quality peanut butter. Looking forward to the day when these jars full of taste are sold in every supermarket, I'm really trying to ignore the cheap ones now. Oh, well, it's Estonia.
And swimming in peanut butter? Not really one of my dreams.