peanut butter cookies...with extras...

i'm not a big peanut butter eater, but tend to buy too much of it thinking we might be out of it. enter peanut butter cookies - a hero in the "using heaps of peanut butter" world.

1 cup (260 grams) peanut butter (use your favourite - smooth or crunchy)
1 cup sugar (220 grams) sugar
1 egg

extras
m and ms
chocolate chips (again use your favourite - white, milk or dark)
dried fruit (your favourites, again - pears, apricots, cranberries)
nuts (cashews, walnuts, macadamias)

preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius and line a baking sheet with baking paper.
combine the peanut butter, sugar and egg in a mixing bowl. add your desired extras, just keeping in mind that if you like putting lots of stuff in, you will have to have enough cookie dough to hold it all together. all the bits you put in can be chopped as finely as you like or left as rustic as you like.
form the dough into balls and place the on the baking sheet. pressthem down a little to flatten and bake for about 15 minutes or until golden.

satay sauce - the non authentic version

this is not the real thing and i am not going to try and pass it off as such. it's just a spicy, peanutty sauce i like to have with the thai meatballs, cold roast meat, eggs, salad, as a dip....whatever.....i'm sure you'll find your own niche for it too.

1/4 cup oil
1 onion, finely diced
1 clove, crushed
1 red chilli, chopped, with or without seeds - your choice
3 tablespoons curry powder
3/4 cup super crunchy peanut butter
440 gram tin crushed pineapple

heat the oil in a medium saucepan and soften the onions.
add the garlic and chilli; be careful not to brown the garlic - you just want it to perfume (yes, that's right, i said perfume) the oil.
add the curry powder and do not let it catch - you just want to let it lose any rawness it may have.
add the peanut butter, followed by the crushed pineapple.
give it a good stir and thin it to the consistency of your liking with the juice from the crushed pineapples. if you poured the whole tin, that's okay - that's what i do - the sauce will be saucier, but still quite thick - peanut butter has that effect - it's thick.
now serve it the way YOU want to.

chocolate peanut butter dreams by whisks

these are surprisingly good, especially when you consider how easy they are to make. they're fudgey and they don't heat up the house too much since they're a stovetop creation, so no oven required! they are quite rich, so don't go overboard eating them, unless your constitution can handle it (how many times can i keep saying they/theyare/they're?). i made mine by pouring the mixture in a loaf tin lined with baking paper and slicied bars off as required, rather than making little mounds of mixture.

1 1/2 cups sugar
5 tablespoons cocoa
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup milk
3 cups quick oats
1 cup peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)
1 teaspoon vanilla

put the sugar, cocoa, butter and milk in a large saucepan and bring to the boil. allow to boil for one minute, then remove the saucepan from the heat.

add the oats, peanut butter and vanilla and mix well. this can be done with a wooden spoon, or if you don't have the energy, an electric mixer.

at this stage, you can either drop tablespoons of the mixture onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper, or pour the mixture into a lined cake tin to set in one piece so you can slice it up to serve.

leave the mixture to cool before serving. refrigerating the mixture will make it fudgier. your call - i like it fudgier.

chocolate peanut biscuits

while i was in london, julia asked me to find a recipe for these biscuits. julia had tried them when we were at high school. debbie gates' mother had made them and julia had never quite gotten over the delicious peanutty, chocolatey crunchiness. she did get the recipe, but has since lost it. my mission, should i chose to accept it, and i have, was to endeavour to recreate or find a recipe for such a biscuit. hmmm....chocolate, peanuts AND crunchy....

unfortunately, these aren't IT, but they are very nice nonetheless - it just gives me an excuse to try out other variations until i achieve THE biscuit.

125 grams butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
pinch salt
1 cup peanuts
1 1/4 cups self raising flour
2 tablespoons cocoa

preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.
cream the butter, sugar, salt and egg in a medium bowl with a mixer.
add the nuts and cocoa.
mix, then add flour. combine well.
form the dough into walnut sized balls and place them on a baking sheet lined with baking paper. press the balls down lightly with a fork or the bottom of a glass dip in sugar (so the dough doesn't stick to the glass).
bake for 15-20 minutes.