Peanut Butter Sea Salt Truffles

As much as I love holiday cookies and confections, I’m just not much of a baker. I’m impatient and imprecise, two things that are not beneficial for a cook who wants to excel in the world of baked goods. Luckily for me, there are a whole lot of treats out there that look and taste fancy, but don’t even require pre-heating an oven.

Peanut butter balls were always a favorite of mine as a kid, and these no-bake truffles are a fancy version, thanks to the addition of one of my all-time favorite dessert ingredients, fleur de sel. It’s an amazing compliment to almost any sweet flavor, plus it adds a satisfying crunch. Combine this sophisticated ingredient with the no-brainer combo of chocolate and peanut butter, and you have a guaranteed winner for your next holiday party! Not to mention that the rainbow nonpareils I added are just so festive and cute. Yeah yeah, I’m one of those people who thinks rainbow sprinkles make everything infinitely better. I can’t help myself.

Peanut Butter Sea Salt Truffles

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EPIC Thanksgiving Dessert: Pecan Pie Brownies with Sweet Potato Casserole Topping

I’m sure you all saw the EPIC Thanksgiving meat monstrosity from last week.  Well to top that off, I made this dessert.  I wanted to share it with you guys just in time for Thanksgiving.

I’m just going to warn you.  It is super easy to make and waaaay too delicious.  So, if you are not into those things, you might want to skip this recipe.

Oh, yeah.  There’s also some candied bacon on it, too.

Pecan Pie Brownies with Sweet Potato Casserole Topping

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Top 5 Halloween Pinterest Recipes

Finally, Halloween is here! We’ve spent weeks dreaming about candy, cocktails, and all sorts of festive party snacks, but you know how it goes… the day hits and you realize you’re one recipe short, or you get invited to a last-minute shindig… never fear, we’ve got you covered. ES has been compiling the best, weirdest, and funniest Halloween ideas on our Endless Halloween Pinboard. Here are the top five most repinned discoveries we’ve posted (not counting our own amazing ideas and creations, which you can find collected here!).

5. Halloween Candy Bark
From Annie’s Eats

Butterfingers, Reeses Cups, M&Ms, honey-roasted peanuts, and toffee candy paired with both bittersweet and white chocolate? Sounds like a recipe for a massive amount of cavities… and a massive amount of Halloween happiness. Also good for post-Halloween when you need to use up all that leftover trick-or-treat candy.

4. White Chocolate Bones
From Inspire Co. / Spoonful

Here’s one that’s perfect for all the last-minute lazybones. (Get it? Sorry.) With only three ingredients, these bones manage to be sweet, salty, crunchy, and pretty cool looking.

3. Pretzel Spiderwebs
From Mom Endeavors

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Can this Banana Bread be Saved?

I have a confession to make.  Despite my mostly-vegetarian, quinoa-loving, local-eating lifestyle, I just don’t like whole wheat flour.  I think whole wheat pasta tastes just like the box it comes in, and every time I try to bake with whole wheat flour, I regret it.  However, we came into several bags of the stuff the other week, and after making some extra nutritious play-dough, I was still left with far too much of the finely ground fiber-fest.  I also had several black bananas, so the next step seemed obvious.

In retrospect, I should have used a combo of white and wheat flour, but in my zealous pursuit of using all of the WW flour, I went a little overboard.  The result was nothing short of brick-like.  It was so dense and dry that even putting a generous dollop of Nutella on every bite just made me wish I was eating the Nutella off a spoon.

Did I mention that I made two loaves of this nasty stuff?  I contemplated just chucking the whole thing in the trash, but I have had a few too many Friday-you-know-what’s lately, so I decided to persevere. 

The Joy of Cooking told me that for bread pudding, you should only use yeast breads, not ones leavened with baking soda, so I went online in search of a different recipe for bread pudding to redeem my sad banana bread.  Just a heads up, it is pretty much exactly the same as the recipe in the Joy of Cooking.  Oh, J of C, why you gotta lie like that?

Anyway, I cut the offending ‘nana bread into chunks, added a few other ingredients, and Voila!  The sweet smell of redemption.

Banana Bread Bread Pudding

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New Halloween Candy Alert!

It’s almost Halloween, and while we are looking forward to scoring some of the classic candy we all know and love (and unfortunately receiving the same duds as usual), there are a couple new tricks and treats to be on the lookout for. Two candy classics, Cadbury’s and Mike & Ike, have released new Halloween versions this year, and I’m here to tell you about them.

I’m not sure where the advertising has been regarding this first treat, but I didn’t know it came out this year until I was at a random convenience store the other day, picking up some Diet Coke to smuggle into the movie theater (come on, I’m not paying $8 for a fountain soda). At the checkout counter I noticed something very interesting:

What? Yes! Thankfully Cadbury realized that the world could not wait until Easter for their delicious filled chocolate eggs and released Cadbury Screme Eggs (we see what you did there, Cadbury) for Halloween. This is a huge development in the world of novelty candy.

Obviously I bought one and rushed home to try it:

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Pumpkin Gone Wild! Top 10 Ways to Use Pumpkin

Do you hear those crisp leaves crunching underneath your feet as you walk to your car in the morning, holding your favorite brand of pumpkin coffee in your hand? Are apples the only fruit that you pack in your lunch for the next month, yet you know you won’t get sick of them? Then you love fall, too. But before we go too far into fall, let’s focus on the hallmark food of the season: pumpkin.

Pumpkin pie and bread are great…but it’s time to mix it up a bit. Enjoy…

10. Pumpkin Pie Martini

Don’t tell me you didn’t think we’d have some form of booze on here. I know, some of your are cringing thinking of “ruining” a glycerin-induced regular martini with the sweet taste of pumpkin. Well then you go ahead and drink your regular martini. The rest of us will enjoy the pumpkin…and not feeling like we have to call poison control.

Recipe: Life’s Ambrosia

9. Pumpkin Pie Dip

There is a dip that neighbors make every year for fruit. It has cream cheese, sugar, and peanut butter in it. I’m not complaining, but I think they could also mix it up and try this pumpkin dip. I’ve had this before, and in addition to fruits and graham crackers – pretzels are a great instrument in carrying the dip. Plus – sweet and salty.

Recipe: The Girl Who Ate Everything

8. Pumpkin Tagliatelle

There’s a restaurant in Philly that makes the best pumpkin pasta I’ve ever had. And I’m dead-set on returning this fall. However, for those of you that can’t enjoy it at the restaurant: this tagliatelle looks awesome. Used the right way, pumpkin adds a buttery, nutty flavor to the pasta. Yum.

Recipe: The Little Things

7. Pumpkin-Caramel Mousse Cakes

Pumpkin. Caramel. Mousse. I’m sold.

Recipe: Bakers Royale

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Beef Jerky Chocolate Bar. Seriously.

I was shopping for a staple gun in a hip gas station convenience store (don’t ask… really, just don’t, my life is weird). At said hip gas station convenience store, instead of your average, mainstream candybars near the checkout, they display exotic and gourmet chocolates. One in particular caught my eye:

A beef jerky milk chocolate bar made by chocolatier Wild Ophelia.

Obviously I had to buy this. I suffered a little case of sticker shock when I brought it to the counter ($6.99! What type of jerky is this, a dried kobe beef filet mignon?!) but I decided I enjoy weird foods too much to turn it down. As far as taste, well, to me it really did taste like a quality milk chocolate bar with little bits of salty, smoky beef jerky mixed in. I gave blind taste tests to a couple victims, and everyone guessed it was some sort of salted chocolate, which isn’t too far off, really.

In the end, meat is good and chocolate is good, so meat plus chocolate is good, I suppose. I don’t really know if I’d pay $6.99 for that again, but I just like to know that a beef-stuffed chocolate bar exists in this world.

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