Homemade Reese's Cups

A few years ago, one of my good friends was eating Reese's peanut butter cups when she suddenly had an allergic reaction.  Her throat closed up and she had difficulty breathing - and it was determined that she had developed an allergy to peanut butter.  Ever since the incident, she hasn't had peanut butter or Reese's cups, which she used to love.

SO, as a present, my roommate and I made her a nice batch of homemade almond butter cups!

So easy to make and so dang good. 

 

In one bowl, you melt some chocolate chips.  I used Hershey's Special Dark.  In another bowl, you combine any nut butter of your choice with a tablespoon or two of nutritional yeast flakes.  These give the nut butter that salty Reese's cup taste.  If you don't have any nutritional yeast, you can do just fine without!

Next, spoon some of the melted chocolate into the bottom of a cupcake liner, just enough to coat the bottom.  Spoon some nut butter on top of that, and then cover the nut butter with more melted chocolate.

Put them into the fridge, and in a few minutes they'll be ready to enjoy!

Banana Blueberry Pancakes

On Sunday morning, my roommate and I celebrated the weekend with a delicious batch of blueberry banana pancakes!

It's an easy batter to whip right up, and the outcome is way delicious.

Blueberry Banana Pancakes

-1 cup whole wheat flour

-2 tsp baking powder

-1 tsp salt

-1/2 cup almond milk (or any milk)

-1/2 cup water

-1 banana, smashed

-a bunch of frozen blueberries

(The batter yielded 7 pancakes for us.)

First mash the banana in the mixing bowl, then add the other ingredients, adjusting the liquid as needed.

Check out the inside of this pancake:

I made sure to be generous with the blueberries as you can see. 

Pan Dulce for Cuba!

I was asked by a friend to make a Cuban sweet bread for his presentation of Cuba in his dorm.  He and his co-RAs decorated the whole lobby as Cuba and his job was to bring an authentic dish.  I have always been intimidated by bread recipes that require the use of yeast, and I've kept my distance.  Until now!

He gave me a recipe for Pan Dulce, brought me the ingredients, and I got to work.  This was on Superbowl Sunday, so my friends were over as we also made dip and guacamole and chocolate chip cookies.

So.... the recipe said to leave the dough in a bowl covered with a dish towel for a few hours.  When you come back, it will have quadrupled in size!  When I came back, it was exactly the same size.  Not sure what happened there.  But I baked it anyway and the good news is, everyone liked the bread!  So my first time making bread from scratch was a semi-success.

 And here's a shot of Sarah's Ghiradelli chocolate chip cookies and our white bean artichoke dip.

Unfortunately I didn't get a shot of Leigh Ann's fresh guacamole, but trust me, it was delicious.  Even though she had to leave out the cilantro because she bought parsley instead on accident.