Tuesday, March 2, 2010

How to simplify your kitchen and make your friends fat

I decided that my cabinets have too much stuff in them that I haven't used in a long time......  Or ever.  Like marshmallows in the shape of ghosts.  So I decided to clean house.  Starting with the Chocolate Shelf.  Yes, I have a shelf dedicated to Chocolate.  Yes, Chocolate is a proper pronoun.  Anything that can inspire you, curse you, lead you to do illegal things, and be so sinfully amazing deserves a proper pronoun.  So, I decided to start getting rid of all the extra bags of Chocolate that, when combined in one basket, weigh more than my 10month old baby.  So, I started with the two brownie mixes that were left over from when I was pregnant with said baby and wasn't sure when I was going to have a Chocolate Craving at 3am.  It happened frequently.....  And if anyone made fun of me for it I promptly sat on the with my 2 brownie packages a night pregnant behind.....  But now that I'm not all hopped up on hormones I don't need the generic brownie mixes, so those were the first to go.  But I can't just make brownies and take them in to the office (the office, being my disposal option of choice, had no idea what level of Chocolate and general sugar overdoses they were in for........).  So I had to put something on top of them.

I happened to have an open jar of chunky peanut butter.  Which I hate.  I have it because a friend had a family member staying in her house who bought it.  And my friend hates it too.  So I did her a favor and disposed of it right into my cabinets.  So, this is the jar of peanut butter that keeps on giving.  Add a little butter, powdered sugar, and SHAZAM, we now have a lightly peanutty nougat reminiscent of the inside of a Snickers bar.  Well, luckily I have a whole canister of salted peanuts to add to the inside of this Snickers brownie (the shazam also triggered the theme epiphany.....).  But Snickers keeps the peanuts together with caramel.  So of course I had to make caramel.  Easy.  Done.

Now we have brownie (with an extra bag of Chocolate Chips added to them, did I mention that?), with nougat on top, and salted peanuts and caramel on top of that.  But Snickers has Chocolate all the way around....so we need more Chocolate.....

I wanted to do a Chocolate Ganache, but couldn't remember the proportions.  So I looked around and found a fudge recipe.  Great!  Top the thing with fudge.  So I made that, it wasn't as smooth as it should have been, but I was working fast and had an ankle-biter wanting attention.  But it turned out ok, and was solid enough that it was a good top to sandwich in the nougat, peanuts, and caramel.

The only thing that went wrong was that I didn't bake the brownies enough, so they were uncooked in the middle.  Which of course I didn't find out until I had made the whole thing and cut into it.  Needless to say I had a huge melt-down.  After the melt-down I decided to take in the edge pieces which were cooked.  And of course with Chocolate, peanut butter, nuts, caramel, and more Chocolate.....rave reviews ensued.

Next week...... peanut butter, Chocolate, and left over cereal......  They'll never know what hit 'em.

No comments: