Peanut butter whoopie pies

Have you ever had a day in which there was no special reason to bake? Maybe you didn’t have all the motivation and enthusiasm in the world? A day in which you just took one of your cooking books, pointed at a recipe and said ‘I will make this.’? I had that kind of day when I made these peanut butter whoopie pies. It was a not-too-special-but-nice-enough day off without much to do for me. So I took one of the newer baking books I have, opened it at a page I marked at some point and decided: this is it. Today, we’ll be making peanut butter whoopies.

Ingredients:

225 self-rising flour

50 grams cocoa powder

250 grams butter
100 grams dark caster sugar

7 grams (1 bag) vanilla sugar

2 eggs

125 ml milk

Peanut butter, powdered sugar and butter

1. Sift the flour and cocoa powder together.

2. Mix the butter with the sugars until creamy.

3. Mix the eggs into the butter, one by one.

4. Add the flour mixture and lastly the milk. Mix until no lumps are left.

5. Use spoons or a pastry bag to make circles on a baking sheet. Flatten the circles a bit. Watch out them too closely together as they will rise and set out a bit.

6. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake the whoopie pies for about 15 minutes, until fluffy but firm.

7. For the frosting between the cakes I used butter cream frosting I had laying around and added peanut butter. I believe I ended up with 1 part butter cream and 1 part peanut butter mixed.

8. Take two whoopie halves of about the same size and dump a lot of peanut butter frosting in between. 

Okay, perhaps not THAT much! You’ll notice as soon as you take a bite, the frosting will squeeze out from between the layers of chocolaty cake. But no need to worry: this only adds to the joy of eating whoopie pies. These whoopie pies, slightly dry because of the amount of cocoa powder, really made me crave milk. At the same time, the peanut butter filling made me just crave more, especially more peanut butter filling. I’m sure it’s not that strange to want milk after chocolate cakes or to always want more (peanut) butter cream. I really hope you enjoy this fluffy cake with its soft filling, because even on those days that don’t seem special at all little things can make the difference. Just like for me, on that not-too-special-but-nice-enough day off, the knowledge of baking something right and secretly being able to nom one chocolate cake sandwich filled with peanut butter sin after the other made it all worthwhile. Forgive me my language, but I’m pretty sure peanut butter is one of the eight sins.

I hope you enjoy this recipe and, considering the date I’m posting, I wish everyone a Very Happy New Year!!! (may we find many more sins and uncover secret recipe treasures!)

5-minute brownie in a mug!

This is the best recipe I can give you for a Christmas dessert in a pinch. It’s an absolutely amazing brownie in a mug and it really takes no more than 5-10 minutes. Serve slightly warm with whipped cream and sauce and you’ll be sure to make everyone ‘wow’ at your creation and no one will ever know how easy it was. Unless you do tell them you made it in 5 minutes and I bet they’ll still be just as amazed.

The first time I made this my sister stared at me while I poured all the ingredients directly in a large mug. She insisted I lost my sanity. And to be very fair I felt a bit silly as well. Somehow the idea of making a cake in less than three minutes in a microwave just made no sense. After mixing the ingredients, I popped the mug into the microwave and stared at it. I wasn’t too surprised when it started rising, I did after all put self-rising flour into it, but it did rise very high. I also wasn’t too surprised nothing exploded, but I did stop the microwave several times to check. I even wasn’t all that amazed when I took the mug out and the brownie turned out to be a shiny exploded chocolate mess. But I was totally surprised when I took a bite and it had the taste and even consistency of real brownies! It was amazing how it turned out that sweet in such short time!

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons self-rising flour

4 tablespoons sugar

1 egg

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

3 tablespoons milk

2-3 tablespoons sunflower oil

3 tablespoons Nutella

Whipped cream

Caramel or chocolate sauce

1. Put all ingredients in a bowl, or directly into a mug, and mix it with a fork until there are no lumps left.

2. Pour it into 2-3 mugs. The mugs in the pictures were filled for about three-quarters. If you don’t want the brownie to poor over the mug, you’ll need to fill it no more than halfway.

3. Stick the mugs into the microwave and microwave on the highest setting for about 2-3 minutes. You might need a bit longer or shorter depending on the wattage of your microwave.

4. Top the brownie-in-a-mug with whipped cream and caramel or chocolate sauce and enjoy!

You might want to leave it for a few minutes, just so the brownie is cool enough to eat. This way your whipped cream won’t immediately melt as well. Also, I personally totally love the way the chocolate drips from the sides, but if you'd like your brownie to look a bit cleaner fill the cup for no more than halfway! For Christmas I’ll be serving this in tiny cappuccino cups with a little ball of ice cream to the side. I can’t wait for the Christmas dinners! There’s so much food I get to try and show off. 

Of course, now I know how to make these brownies-in-a-mug, I’ll have to start experimenting. I already thought of adding chocolate chips or fudge bits. The very thought of it makes me drool! I also have to start making a white chocolate version. Or how about a gingerbread-version? Do you think I can substitute the Nutella with jam? Since the recipe is so easy I’ll be sure to get down to it soon. I also won’t have to worry about wasting a lot of ingredients!

Thank you for reading again and please leave comments if you're equally amazed, you experimented with this as well or just random! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Enjoy!

Mitarashi Dango

Dango, for me, was one of those things that I keep bumping into but never got the chance to taste. It’s just like the Chocolate Eggnog I posted before. I don’t live in America and it’s no tradition here, so I’d never tasted it. The same way I don’t live in Japan and there’s no way you could find a place that sells dango here. Which means at some point, you’re just going to have to make it yourself! I finally got the ingredients together, but when I looked up the recipes I was convinced it was going to turn out to be a disaster. To start off with: are dango boiled or steamed or grilled? I’ve found so many different recipes and not one of them could agree on any single aspect of the recipe. So I just went with one that I felt most comfortable with: Mitarashi Dango.

After following the recipe and tasting the dango I suddenly had a whole range of questions. For one, are dango supposed to taste that floury? Or, when and how do they eat dango actually? What size are they? Do they add colour and/or taste to the tri-coloured dango you see sometimes? And lastly: how did such a plain floury ball come with such a lovely sauce?

Ingredients for the rice balls:

100 grams rice flour

100 grams glutionious rice flower

2 tablespoons sugar

150 ml warm water

Ingredients for the sauce:

5 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon mirin

4+1 tablespoons water

1 tablespoon cornstarch

Making the rice balls:

1. Sift the flours and sugar together.

2. Stir in the warm water and knead until you get a soft and smooth ball of dough.

3. Divide and roll into little balls the size of a bottle cap.

4. Boil water in a large pan and add the rice balls as soon as the water boils, preferably at once or shortly after eachother.

5. Wait until the balls start to float and leave them to boil for another 1-3 minutes.

6. Take them all out and put them into icewater to stop the boiling process.

7. Drain the balls well and skewer 3-5 balls on a skewer. Grill them at this point, if you want.

Making the sauce:

1. Add the sugar, soy sauce, mirin and 4 tablespoons water together in a small pan and bring to boil.

2. Add one tablespoon water to the cornstarch and stir. Add the mixture to the rest in the pan and stir until it dissolves.

3. Take the sauce off the fire when it’s thickened, or at least before it burns!

Assembly:

1. Pour as much sauce as you can over the dango. In this case, more is better! Then you’re done. Make sure you eat most of it before anyone else has a chance to taste!

Now that you finished making the recipe: didn’t kneading the rice flour dough feel amazing?! I’ve never felt anything like it. It was like using paper clay. I might have kneaded it more than really necessary just because it felt so nice.

Also, I tried to find reviews of what dango really tastes like. It tastes like floury balls! I’m glad I totally nailed it at that point. It’s also supposed to be slightly sweet, but I can’t remember if it did through the overload of sticky sweet sauce. The sauce, I found out, wasn’t thick enough, but it sounds like it had enough of the sticky and sweet. I haven’t been able to find an answer to my boil, steam or grill question though, but I can tell you they’re eaten all year round, they’re supposed to be smaller than I made them (bottle-cap size), the tri-coloured dango are flavoured with a colour as side-effect (red bean, egg and green tea) and the lovely sauce is there just because we like it!