Peanut Butter-Chocolate Biscotti

Wow guys... I am so sorry I've been gone for so long! But I promise I have a good excuse... Dane and I just moved from our teeny little apartment into our big awesome house, so needless to say we've been a little busy! Between packing, moving, getting sick on the first day we were here, unpacking, taking finals, and working, I just haven't had the time or the energy to spend here. Still, I knew I'd be out for a little while with the move, but I never expected to be out for two whole weeks! But don't worry guys... I promise the silence is over.

It's been a hectic couple of weeks, but it's so nice to have a huge, amazingly cute kitchen to work in now! I'm more excited than ever to cook and bake now that I have such an inspiring space to do it in. Isn't it great?

But enough blabbering about the house... onto the food!

Immediately after we moved, we were without internet for about a week. And while it was kind of nice not having the distraction of facebook and youtube while we began unpacking, it was a little on the frustrating side because both of us had online finals to take during that week. Fate is always convenient, right? So, since my advanced patient monitoring final simply couldn't wait a week for a technician to make out to our new house, I spent one entire afternoon holed up in the coffee shop down the road working on it. And as I sat there contemplating the use of transcutaneous CO2 monitoring and munching on a tasty peanut butter biscotti, it hit me... I should make these at home!

And I had the perfect excuse to make some... my best friend Sydney and her new husband(!) Corey are both graduating from college this Friday, and I made them a little gift basket with some cute coffee mugs, a bag of coffee, and some cool hot chocolate that turns orange when you heat it up, and these biscotti seemed like just the thing to finish it off! The nice thing about making biscotti at home is that you can make them as hard or as soft as you want by simply varying the baking time during the second step... I, for one, am not a huge fan of having biscotti that threaten to break your teeth, so I went for middle ground with these. And even though I burned the bottoms just a little thanks to my new oven - which I'm quite certain is baking at a higher temp that it tells me it is - they were still very tasty dunked in a nice warm cup of coffee. I hope Sydney and Corey enjoy these as much as I did!

Bachelors' Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chip Cookies

I can hardly believe that my wedding is a mere 8 days away. It's been over a year in the making, and it's always seemed so far off until now... it's quite unreal to think that soon it will be over. To celebrate our last weekend as unmarried people, Dane and I are going our separate ways to celebrate with our bestest friends. While I'm renting a hotel room with my girls downtown for some bar-hopping excitement, Dane chose to spend his bachelor weekend in the mountains with his buddies at his uncle's cabin. So - being the best fiance ever - I decided to bake some peanut butter-chocolate chip cookies to send with him, in the hopes that he and the boys won't completely forget me while they're away.

This is a tried and true - and super easy - cookie recipe. Peanut butter cookies are Dane's absolute favorites, so I've made them more than a few times, but this time I thought I'd make them extra special and add chocolate chips. Nothing crazy, but a little more fun. They're soft and distinctly peanut buttery as a peanut butter cookie should be, and I added just enough chocolate chips to lend a little bit more sweetness but not enough to overpower and make you think you're eating a completely different cookie. I thought they were pretty darn delicious... and I hope the boys do too! Have a great time this weekend guys! Try not to do anything too crazy, okay?

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake

A month or so ago when my family was talking about the BBQ we would have in celebration of Megan and I graduating this spring, I had a crazy idea... I wanted to make the cake for the event. Since our graduations were so close together, Megan and I agreed that we'd just have one BBQ for the both of us, instead of one for each. But graduation is no small event for either of us. Megan was born with a chromosomal abnormality and, when she was a baby, no one was even sure how long she'd live... her graduation from high school is a momentous feat. And of course, I've worked hard to get myself through college. So I decided that even if we couldn't each have our own special party, we at least each deserved our own special cake.

So, always eager to buy a new cookbook, I bought Sky High Cakes for inspiration. Together, Megan and I decided what cakes we would have for our BBQ... and I was not a bit surprised when Megan chose one covered in chocolate and peanut butter. This kid would eat a whole jar of peanut butter with a spoon if we let her.

And oh boy... did she pick a delicious cake.

Once we cut into the cakes there was no time to get photos of the individual slices... they went too fast! This cake was by far the favorite too, and there wasn't crumb left of it by the end of the night. This cake was downright sinful. The layers of cake were fudgy, and the creamy peanut butter frosting melted in your mouth like butter in the oven. And, even though I didn't think it was possible, the chocolate-peanut butter glaze took the sinful flavor of this to a whole 'nother level. It was rich and creamy, and chocolatey, and peanut buttery... and amazing. 

After they finished with a piece of this cake I had people trying to hire to make their birthday cakes for them! My grandmother thinks I ought to turn cake-baking into a side business... and someone even suggested that I should make my own wedding cake, haha! And to be honest, I don't need the encouragement, because I'd already thought of that myself. But that would be crazy, right? Who needs the stress of putting a cake together the day before her wedding? Right? :)