Welcome to the second installment of Recipe Review! This one focuses on two peanut butter recipes I tried, neither of which I was mindful enough to take a final picture of. My apologies! Thankfully they're from blogs, so you can see the original version there.

Peanut Butter Party Chippers

This recipie is from Picky Palate, where Jenny posts some crazy fun recipes. Here's the picture that inspired me and the accompanying link.
http://picky-palate.com/2015/02/09/salted-caramel-peanut-butter-party-chippers/

Here's the ingredients:

Unfortunately, the recipe depends on a Skippy Limited Edition Salted Caramel Peanut Butter that wasn't in stock by the time I made this recipe. So on the left, you can see my mix of plain peanut butter and Jiff Salted Caramel Hazelnut spread. It turned out a little too rich, so I'd recommend using only peanut butter and just not worrying about the caramel flavor in her recipe.

I forgot to take a picture of the finished product (this was before the days of 100 Best Cookies and photographing each recipe way more than necessary), but here's what the dough looked like before it went into the oven:

They were fun! Like I said, a little rich, but I think that'd be fixed if the caramel chocolate spread was left out. 

Brownie Batter Frosted Peanut Butter Bars
These are from Maegan, who's the blogger behind TheBakerMama. She made these bars for her husband's birthday. I made them for my physical therapist's office. They were a little too rich for me, but they were a hit at the office! Here's the link and a picture! If you love rick peanut butter and rich brownies, you'll love these!
http://thebakermama.com/recipes/brownie-batter-frosted-peanut-butter-bars/

the inspiration:

one of Maegan's genius pictures:

To be entirely honest, I think I would try a new recipe before making either of these again, unless I had a particular peanut-butter-brownie-loving friend. They were both fine, but I feel a little "been-there-done-that" about them. The individual blogs, however? Man, I wanna make everything on them. Stay tuned!

baking, bible, bbbbbbbbhmmm,

charlie

has there ever been a worse sign-off in the history of blogging? no? hmm. 

Today's post is a quickie; just wanted to share the details of these fun cards I posted on Instagram! 

I was at Target over Thanksgiving, and these letters from sugar paper for Target caught my eye. 

I grabbed one for each of my friends' initials, alphabetized the rest (that's really not important), and grabbed a set of 10 greeting cards from around the corner. 

I made sure they had glitter gold too, to match the letters!

When I assembled the gifts (cards? gifts? I can't decide. Technically it's a card, but it's functioning as a gift...hm.), I tore the card in half and wrote on the back of the sparkly front. I punched a hole through the top corner, ran some string through the card and the letter, (I just happened to have that pretty gold from Hobby Lobby clearance a long time ago!), and tied a knot or a bow. So cute! 

Shoutout to Target for the supplies for this fun idea! Oh, I forgot to mention—the letters were $2 each, and the cards were less than $1 each. Hooray for affordable presents, because the more presents, the merrier! 

I had planned to attach some sort of treat to the cards, but that hasn't quite worked out yet. I have Dark Chocolate Peppermint Joe-Joe's from Trader Joe's, but the bags I have aren't cute. So we'll see how that goes!

Merry Christmas! 

Maddie/Charlie

(I really should figure this name thing out...)

Today's recipie was picked by me, Rah, Caroline (she's 8), and Ab (she's 6). Does that explain why we skipped up to number 45? Ok sweet. 

Here's the only special ingredient: weird canned milk! We sometimes already have this in the cabinet, but we didn't today. 

I don't have pictures for every step today, so hang with me. 

Start by beating the butter, then add sugar and baking soda. 

Sodenote: Being home rocks, and one reason is that the lighting for the baking pictures is better than back in Birmingham. It doesn't really matter, but it's kind of nice. 

Add the eggs and vanilla, then add the flour. 

 

Now stir in the oats! The easiest way we found to do this was with our hands...you do you. 

Press two-thirds of this into the pan, spread chocolate* over it, then crumble the rest of the batter on top of the chocolate. 

*To make the chocolate, melt the butter, chocolate, and condensed milk over the stove, then stir in the vanilla. Easy enough!

Stick it in the oven at 350 for 25 minutes. 

Isn't it beautiful? You can see that I tried to make some of the dough into cookies; sadly I forgot about them and they burned. But the oatmeal dough was so yummy that I bet they would've been delicious! 

Here they are all finished! Aren't they pretty?

I'm not gonna give it you ya soft: Honestly, these weren't my favorite. 

I know, I know. Why did I do a whole post on it then? 

For learning! For truth! The people must know!! 

I guess it's because if I'm going to do this whole 100 cookie thing, I'm going to go all out. I'm going to report on *every* recipie, even if I wouldn't recommend that you make them. Though now I'm thinking that next time I dislike a recipie, maybe I won't go as in-depth with the step-by-step. 

The oatmeal dough was delicious, but I really disliked the chocolate layer. So even though I'm giving the "taste" category a low recommendation, you could maybe try the dough for cookies or make a different cover layer. Then again, why would you do that if you could just make oatmeal cookies?

Taste: 4/10

Visual: 8/10

Easy-to-Make: 7/10

Here's the link! 

http://www.bhg.com/recipe/cookies/chocolate-revel-bars/