Revelation, Disaster, and Still Undecided

Home one morning with a freshly-made peanut butter sandwich, but wanting to take the chill out of the bread, I popped the entire sandwich into the toaster over for two minutes and was pleasantly surprised to bite into a crispy sandwich. A panini, without the pressing. With this shortcut, it's likely I'll never eat peanut butter on toast again!

And then in the "what was I thinking category," I totally misjudged a recipe and came out with a cake that I'm currently trying to re-imagine as something else. I was craving chocolate chip cookies, but in the name of daring (and wanting to waste some time, I suppose), I settled upon a Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Crumb Cake from an untested chocolate book. The name is a mouthful, the cake not so much. I made the mistake of using natural peanut butter, which I find usually gives inferior baking results compared with Skippy or Jiff, with all of its additives. I also used non-fat milk where whole milk would have made more sense given the extremely skinny nature of the recipe. It's a dry, dusty cake, with a hint of peanut butter flavor and a weird peanut cocoa crumb topping. I knew it was bad news by the time I started assembling the cake since it was far too doughy to portend light and fluffy. Maybe it will morph into biscotti. Then again, maybe it will just remain one of these baking disasters. I can't say that I see much potential for this cake. Next time I'm making chocolate chip cookies.

Finally, on the gourmet peanut butter front, I've just opened a jar of locally made crunchy peanut butter from The Food Mill. There seems to be a bare minimum of oil added, so it's kind of like a peanut butter paste. Pros: it's can't separate. Cons: it's just a mash of peanuts, and not much butter.