Recipe: No Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars

No Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars
livingsweetmoments.com/no-bake-chocolate-peanut-butter-bars
5 stars

This is a crazy-good, restaurant-worthy dessert.  Believe me as I've eaten a lot of dessert.  There are 5 layers to it: 1) a graham cracker crust, 2) a cereal crunchy layer, 3) peanut butter mousse, 4) chocolate ganache and  5) peanuts on top as a garnish.  It's the mix of textures and salty/sweet from the chocolate with peanut butter that makes this a top dessert for me.

There not a lot of ingredients, but it does take a little time to make because of all of the layers.

Ingredients: graham crackers, butter, Honey Bunches of Oats cereal, peanut butter, semi-sweet chocolate, cream cheese, confectioners sugar, heavy cream, chopped peanuts

Tips:

• Definitely use Honey Bunches of Oats cereal as it gives the right amount of crunch and also imparts a nice complexity from the honey flavor
• Used regular crunchy peanut butter (not unsweetened)
• Next time, will try beating the peanut butter mousse much less as it looked like the mixture was breaking up
• Sprinkled sea salt on top since our peanuts for the garnish were unsalted
• Forgot to line the pan with aluminum foil!

Recipe: Creamy Baked Pasta with Gruyere and Prosciutto

Creamy Baked Pasta with Gruyere and Prosciutto
Food & Wine Magazine, Feb 2020, p. 43
5 stars

This is a restaurant-worthy, guest-serving worthy, delicious mac & cheese. We made half the recipe because I wasn't quite sure how it was going to turn out as there aren't that many ingredients, and it looked so easy ... too easy to make.  It was incredible! We had this as a side dish with steak and a wedge salad.  I have two other favorite mac & cheese recipes, and this is in the top 3.

Ingredients: a short pasta, Gruyere cheese, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, heavy cream, nutmeg, Kosher salt; can serve with sliced prosciutto

Recipe: Chocolate-Olive Oil Crisps

Chocolate-Olive Oil Crisps

Martha Stewart Living, Mar 2020, p. 102

3.5-4 stars?

I'm not sure if I'll make these cookies again. I liked their texture and depth of chocolate flavor, but to me, they tasted like there was a bit of sesame oil in it. Not sure why or if the honey, vanilla or extra-virgin oil was imparting some odd flavor -- or maybe my tastebuds!

Ingredients: all-purpose flour, Dutch-process cocoa powder, egg, honey, vanilla extract, extra-virgin olive oil, granulated sugar, baking soda, Kosher salt, turbinado sugar