One true love

Talking about our childhoods we naturally came to the topic of our favourite foods. Oreos and milk, slurpy-spaghetti, and peanut butter. When Ms. Butter was little she was introduced to peanut butter by her parents, and immediately fell in love. This love-affair has lasted 30 plus years and hasn't waned. Picture this, Ms. Butters, a spoon, and a freshly opened jar. Organic, smooth, chunky; as long as it's peanut butter, Ms. Butter's is in on it. Ms. Butter's is currently yelling across the kitchen that peanut butter is great in the morning, for a snack, for lunch and often for dinner (it makes a great University-budget meal!).

Since we had so much luck with our Lemon Cake - we automatically pulled out our tried, tested, and true favourite cook book: Barefoot Contessa Parties. Wondering what to make, we decided that it was a cookie night. Peanut butter was hot on our mind and Mr. Crumbs was flipping through the book when Ms. Butters immediately slammed her hand down onto a recipe: peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. DONE!

Pulling out the jar of smooth peanut butter we quickly whipped up a batch of cookies. When looking through the cupboards, we realized that the only chocolate chips that we had were milk chocolate - we thought, "chocolate is chocolate!"; so we mixed it all together and baked them in the oven. We were eager to try them - so out came the milk and we stuffed our faces with cookies - how bad can that be?

To match the cookies with those of our childhood memories; we used a fork to make the iconic peanut butter cookie top and had to dust the forks with some flour, to reduce the stickiness. The cookies were good, and had that memorable peanut butter texture; but were a little dry.

Also, when a recipe calls for bitter sweet chocolate chips - we'd recommend that you use those - the milk chocolate chips were a little sickly-sweet in the cookies. They were still edible and tasted great for breakfast, afternoon snacks, and the ever popular midnight snack.  But we don't know if we'll be making these again.

 Mr. Crumbs felt that the peanut butter taste was lacking in the recipe and recommends adding another 1/2  to 1 cup  of peanut butter to get a better taste.

Regardless of the not-so-great results with this recipe - we strongly recommend that you get your hands on a copy of this book. Barefoot Contessa Parties, by Ina Garten; is a highly addictive book filled with great recipes (including Lemon Cake/Loaf) and fun pictures of great looking food.

Recommended drink pairing; milk.

Walking Barefoot

The inspiration

Walking along a hot and humid street, Ms. Butters came across a fruit stand and was immediately drawn to the brightly coloured fruits that summer seems to be filled with. Cherries, plums, and peaches were all calling to her but something else stood out - Lemons! Just the colour and smell of citrus finalized this tarty sale.

Coming to the kitchen, the next question became, "what do we make?" An easy question as Mr. Crumbs grabbed the "go to" book - Barefoot Contessa Parties. Can we tell you how much we love the Barefoot Contessa?  That woman has no shame in using liberal amounts of butter to cook and bake which makes her Ms. Butters hero.

Her cookbooks are full of lovely recipes and great pictures. We all know and love her iconic line "how bad can that be", which makes us weak in the knees - finally someone who loves butter as much as us!

Lemon Cake

Her cookies are the star choice in our tins of Christmas cookies and often the ones we keep coming back for! Usually, when we're baking for Christmas we make a variety... wait why are we talking about Christmas when it's still summer?

For the summer, Mr Crumbs and Ms Butter enjoy desserts with a tart flavour and long walks on the beach - this is not a singles add, we know - But after our day out and about, we raced to the kitchen to whip up this recipe.  The main difference between the recipe we used and the recipe online is that we used buttermilk instead of yogurt. Considering not many people drink buttermilk - we easily used regular milk and about a tablespoon of the prized lemon juice into regular milk - and voila instant buttermilk.

How bad can that be

The cake was good, but heavy. More like a loaf than cake. The lemon flavour was subtle and next time  more lemon zest is needed (because you can really never have too much).

With our recipe, it said that we'd get two cakes (or loaves), but we cut the recipe in half and made only one - next time, we make the two cakes - because, "how bad can that be".