Jeni's Splendid "Buckeye State" ice cream

I love natural peanut butter so much that I often snack on it directly from the jar, sometimes dropping chocolate chips on top of my spoon to make it fancy. I also love ice cream. However, I never really liked peanut butter flavored ice cream. But I do really like buckeye candies....so, I tried a recipe from Jeni's for "buckeye state" ice cream which includes salty peanut butter, honey and chocolate (I used my Jeni's book to make the recipe, which can also be found here via another blogger). I liked it because it really does taste like a frozen buckeye, but I am still not sure I am a peanut butter ice cream fan (it's so weird to me!). But Eric stated that it was teh best ice cream he ever tasted, so at least one of us was happy :)

Halva Chocolate Chip Cookies

On an unusually cool July afternoon, I decided to bake. I ransacked my pantry and threw together this recipe with the random ingredients I had on hand. Riffing on this salted tahini chocolate chip cookie recipe that I made in the Spring, and these "Famous Oatmeal Cookies" from my old Quaker Oats tin, I came up with these Halva Chocolate Chip Cookies and I am really happy how they turned out. I love the combo of oats and chocolate, and the chopped halva melts in the oven and adds a nutty sweetness. I also tossed in about a teaspoon of instant espresso which helps to bring out more flavor. My only complaint was that these cookies spread in the pan SO much; I am not quite sure why that happened. They had perfect chewiness, which I was aiming for, but would have preferred if these didn't spread so much. (Including a link to this cookie cooking chart here to help me prevent that in the future).

1 stick butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup water
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp instant espresso
1 1/2 cups white flour
1 1/2 cups oats
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 heaping cup halva, chopped (I used pistachio)
1 scant cup semi-sweet chocolate chips


Heat oven to 350. Combine first 7 ingredients; mix well. Add next 3 dry ingredients and mix just till combined. Stir in chopped halva and chocolate chips. Spoon onto parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake between 12-15 minutes (mine cooked for 13.5 minutes).

Enjoy :)

Lemon Frozen Yogurt with Blackberry-Raspberry Swirl

Made this delicious frozen yogurt from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams while trying to use up my berry bounty from last month. I used a mixture of raspberries and blackberries (instead of blueberries) to make the swirl. This was a winner. The berry swirl was tart and delicious, and the lemon frozen yogurt could have even help up on it's own without a fruit swirl. We all really liked this one.

Blackberry Breakfast Bars

Whenever our grocery store has a big sale on berries, we stock up. Which is great - who doesn't love fresh berries? - but really puts pressure on me to use them up quickly. Last month we got several containers of blackberries that I tried to use up fast. I ended up making this breakfast bar recipe from Smitten Kitchen, subbing raspberries for blackberries. I also used about a cup of buckwheat flour in place of most of the white flour (I had that on hand from a CSA box from a month or two previously). I think the buckwheat flour has a different cooking quality than white flour, because I cooked these as indicated and they seemed underdone. The flavor was really nice, though, and it was good to find a recipe to use up lots of blackberries all at once. I love the flavor of blackberries, really hate the size and texture of them for some reason.