Peanut Butter Cups

Mmm. Chocolate and peanut butter.

We’ve been making candies at Christmas for several years now, and, while we have our favorites, we do like to try something new from time to time. This year we decided to try our hand at making Peanut Butter Cups. Not like the ones you can buy at the store; we’re talking Peanut Butter Cups with real ingredients. Quality ingredients, such as a good dark chocolate, and a not-too-sweet peanut butter filling. After all, those Peanut Butter Cups in the two-pack are overly sweet, and the chocolate barely tastes like chocolate. We know we can do better. So can you, fellow scratcher.

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The Mi-Cuit

Best cake in the world? Maybe!

How would you like to make the cake that’s the best in the world, according to Pierre Hermé, named the world’s best pastry chef in 2016? Are you thinking that it’s going to be some super-complex recipe, with difficult to find ingredients, hard to follow instructions, and specialized equipment, that would be far beyond your capabilities? Well, it’s not true. This cake is simple, contains just five ingredients, and you can mix it up with a spatula and a fork. It’s true.

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Torte au Chocolat (Chocolate Mousse Tart with a Hazelnut Crust)

As tasty as it looks.

This is what we were planning to make with the Bouchon’s Chocolate Mousse that posted the other day. Basically, a simple chocolate-hazelnut tart. And, it is pretty simple. A simple crust that you bake and fill with chocolate mousse. Nothing more. But, don’t let simple fool you into thinking that it won’t stand out. Sometimes the simplest desserts can be the best.

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Bouchon’s Chocolate Mousse

And we have mousse!

This is our third recipe for chocolate mousse, and a fair question would be, why? Well, let us explain. Our first Chocolate Mousse recipe is probably the easiest mousse recipe you’ll find. It makes a pretty tasty mousse, but it has two drawbacks: one, it doesn’t hold well, meaning you need to eat it soon after making (okay, maybe that’s not a real drawback), and two, it contains raw eggs, which might concern some people. The second Dark Chocolate Mousse recipe …

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Chocolate-Pistachio Biscotti

A crunchy, not too sweet snack.

A few weeks ago we were looking through Baking at République, by Margarita Manzke, and, as usual, we saw a number of recipes we wanted to try. We copied down a few to store in our vast archive here at Scratchin’ It Central, figuring we’d try at least a couple, including this one for biscotti. If you’re wondering how we can get recipes from so many different cookbooks, we have two words for you: Public Library.

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Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake Bites

chocolate raspberry cheesecake bites
chocolate raspberry cheesecake bites
Four dozen cheesecakes in less than 45 minutes!

We buy cream cheese when it’s on sale, but, then we have to use it. That’s harder than it seems, as we don’t spread cream cheese on bagels or anything like that. We tend to prefer the harder cheeses for eating. So, after a while, we look in the dairy drawer in the refrigerator, see the block of cream cheese, and figure we need to use it somehow, and then make something up. This time, we made small cheesecake bites. Mainly because this is the easiest thing ever to make.

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Crispy and Chewy Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

crispy chewy chocolate chip cookies
crispy chewy chocolate chip cookies
Two kinds of chocolate! Crispy and chewy!

Are you a crunchy cookie fan? Or, do you prefer chewy cookies? Well, with this recipe, you can have both crunchy and chewy in the same cookie.

Like dark bittersweet chocolate? Or semi-sweet chocolate? Again, you get both in the same cookie. And, lots of chocolate too, which, we think, everyone prefers.

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