These are a favorite around our house at Christmas. What could be better than peanut butter and chocolate? I have two versions of this recipe. Both are good, and I will devour either one if it’s sitting in front of me, but my favorite version is Recipe #1. The second recipe contains oatmeal in the base, which gives it a nice chew (or crunch if you over-bake them).

Recipe 1: Peanut Butter Bars

Makes: one 13x9 pan

Ingredients:

Operation Baking Gals is a group started by Susan of She's Becoming DoughMessTic dedicated to shipping baked goodies once a month to soldiers stationed overseas. According to Dorie, these Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipster cookies are good candidates for shipping, so “Give A Little Support” and bake these up!

{They’re also perfect as after-school treats for the kids!}

Playing Around
I tried baking these cookies in paper coin wrappers! I thought it might be a cool way to keep a log shape, and it worked {for the most part}.

To get the cookie dough in the wrapper, you just take a spoonful and push it in. I found using my hands was easier than a spoon.

I was running behind on my TWD post and too impatient to chill the dough as recommended in the recipe, so when they were baking, they gushed out a bit. But, after chilling them and then trimming the ends, they looked presentable. Plus, they didn’t get crispy, but stayed soft and chewy inside the wrapper.

I first tried this technique with the Granola Grabbers, where the dough is more crumbly, and it worked perfectly with that cookie dough.

Recipe: Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters

You can find the recipe for Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours (affiliate link) by Dorie Greenspan. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Stefany of Proceed with Caution who chose the recipe for this week.

Baking time: I baked them in the coin wrapper for 15-18 minutes at 350˚F.

Yield: I halved the recipe, and it made 18 $2-Canadian-coin-size log cookies.

Tasting Notes
The oatmeal and chocolate combined with the peanut butter makes these cookies delicious! I loved how soft and chewy mine were. It's the perfect treat for the first day of school!

Recipe for Next Week (September 9)
Chocolate Whopper Malted Drops on page 85 Rachel of Confessions of a Tangerine Tart.

More to Explore:

• Index of Recipes
• Visual Recipe Index

Another week, and another sweet from Dorie’s book of desserts. This time peanut butter and chocolate.

A torte usually means a cake that’s round, has nuts in it instead of or in addition to flour, has a sweet icing, and is made with many eggs. Although there aren’t any eggs in this torte, it still qualifies as a torte. It is definitely sweet!

Bottom
The crust is made of crushed Oreos, butter, and a touch of salt. I thought I’d try both the regular Oreos and the peanut butter version for the crust to see which one I preferred. The peanut butter cookies were definitely thicker than the original version, which made the crust nice and thick to hold the filling.

Middle
The filling is basically whipped cream with flavorings added to it. Cream cheese gives it that sweet, rich, distinctive flavor that a good cream cheese icing has. Add to that chocolate, peanut butter, a few crunchy bits of peanuts and the flavors of espresso powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg and you have a delicious filling for this torte.

For the chocolate, I once again dug into my stash of Amedei chocolate from the Gooey Chocolate Cake week and wasn’t disappointed with the rich chocolate chunks and ganache that topped this torte.

I experimented with the peanut butter angle, trying regular crunchy peanut butter, a white chocolate-flavored peanut butter, and, just for fun, Nutella.

Top
For this torte, a ganache is poured over top. Ganache is a fancy way of saying cream and chocolate. You heat the cream, pour it over chocolate, and you have ganache. In Dorie’s recipe, the chocolate is melted over a double-boiler first, and then the warmed cream is added. I cooled this mixture before pouring it over the torte so that it wouldn’t melt the mousse.

Garnishes
As a garnish, chopped peanuts are sprinkled on top. I tried both salted and unsalted peanuts, but I don’t have a preference after tasting the tortes. Either is fine.

As for other garnishes, I sprinkled some instant espresso powder into crème fraiche leftover from last week, and served it on the side with some banana slices. The tartness of the crème fraiche along with the clean taste of the banana was really nice with this decadent dessert. It’s hard to improve on peanut butter and banana? Except for maybe Nutella and banana!

Playing around with the pan
For half the recipe, I used my mini cheesecake pan to make individual tortes . I like the serving size of this pan for such a rich dessert. For the other half, I used my 6-inch springform pan.

Recipe: Peanut Butter Torte

You can find the recipe for Peanut Butter Torte at this blog Ugg Smell Food or in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours (affiliate link) by Dorie Greenspan. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
This was a rich, delicious, decadent dessert that we enjoyed in small doses.

As for the crust, I liked the old-fashioned Oreo cookie crust. The extra peanut butter-flavored Oreos were a bit too much for this dessert.

For the fillings, all the variations were good, in different ways. The plain peanut butter was sweeter than the other two, the white chocolate in the peanut butter gave it a nice flavor, but the Nutella was my favorite (however, it wasn’t everyone’s favorite).

A variation I tried was a mini banana split sans ice cream, more like a parfait. On a bed of banana, pipe some filling, top with strawberry, sprinkle with nuts, and a dollop of whipped cream, and enjoy.

I also tried freezing one of the mini tortes to serve frozen. Serving it this way took away some of the richness, which made it more pleasant to eat, especially on a hot day. This turned out to be my favorite way to eat this delicious dessert. I think I’ll pop the leftovers in the freezer and save it to serve on Mother’s Day! Thanks, Dorie, for another fine recipe.

Recipe for Next Week (May 13)
Florida Pie on pages 340 and 341 chosen by Dianne of Dianne’s Dishes.

More to Explore:

• Index of Recipes
• Visual Recipe Index