I love peanut butter, do you? Peanut butter works well in so many different flavour combinations, peanut butter and chocolate, peanut butter and white chocolate, peanut butter and oreos, peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and pretzels, peanut butter and banana, as you can see, I could go on all day with this, so I’ll stop there. If you’re a big peanut butter lover like I am, give this smoothie a try.

Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie

1/2 banana

1 cup milk

1/2 tblsp chia seeds

1 tsp sweetener

1 tblsp peanut butter

Blend all the ingredients together and enjoy. This is a great snack to keep you going in between meals or bulk it up with some oats and protein powder for a fulfilling meal.

Peanut butter and nutella is an amazing combination. The best thing since sliced bread, or the best thing on sliced bread rather! Apart from putting together the frosting I also experimented with my own chocolate cupcake recipe. It turned out pretty well, I do think it would work better as a cake or mini cake recipe though. The recipe turned out light, moist fluffy cakes, so light and fluffy in fact that they came away from the cupcake liners, still tasty though so I’m not complaining, and definitely a good attempt for a first try at complete recipe development.

Also, you’ll notice the title of this post is nutella, peanut butter ‘frosting’. We call it icing here, but I think ‘frosting’ sounds so much better.

To get the 2 tone frosting effect I put each frosting in separate disposable bags and then into a cotton piping bag. You can of course put both frostings in 1 bag on 2 different sides, I didn’t do this for 2 reasons, I wanted the 2 frostings fairly defined and I wanted to be able to store each of the left over frostings separately. You’ll notice the nozzle above is round, I did end up changing it as I wanted something frillier.

Chocolate Cupcake recipe

125 g butter

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 cup plain flour

1/4 cup cocoa powder

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup buttermilk (1/4 cup milk + 1/4 cup yogurt)

Pre heat oven to 180C. In a mixer beat butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla essence. Add flour, baking and cocoa powder. While combining, slowly add buttermilk till completely combined. Using a spoon fill into a cupcake pan 3/4 of the way up. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until skewer comes out clean.

Peanut Butter Nutella Frosting

100g butter

2 cups icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1/4 cup peanut butter

1/4 cup nutella

Beat butter sugar and vanilla on a low speed at first so you don’t have any flying icing sugar. Then move to a high speed until light and fluffy. If your buttercream feels a little stiff, add in 1-2 tblsp hot water. Separate into 2 equal batches. Mix in peanut butter to 1 batch and nutella into the other. Fill a piping bag and decorate as you wish.

One of my favourite flavour combinations, peanut butter and nutella works so well together, if you’re a fan too, give this frosting a try!

PS. I was meant to post this a while ago but haven’t had a chance, so just wanted to say sorry to all those people fasting at the moment.

I don’t usually keep a lot of junk food in the house, so when I need a treat I have to be creative. If you’re in need of a simple, easy treat, with ingredients you’d already have in your fridge or pantry, give this a go.

Peanut butter banana pastry

I made a very small batch, this made 4 pastries, feel free to double or quadruple if you need more.

1/2 a sheet of puff pastry (you could just use slices of bread)
1 banana
2 tblsp peanut butter
1/2 cup cream
1 tblsp icing sugar

Pre heat oven to 190C. Cut pastry into 4 rectangles. Cut 2 pieces of baking paper and place your pasty inbetween them on the tray. Place something heavy on top of the pastry to keep them flat (I sandwiched the pastry between 2 baking sheets and also used ramekins for some weight). Put in the oven for 15 minutes, or until lightly golden, mine were more like golden brown, oh well, still tasted good.

Slice bananas. And whip cream with icing sugar. Once pastry is cooked and cooled split the pieces in half, this can be tricky, so you can skip this step. And just have an open pastry instead.

Spread a layer of peanut butter on each of the pastries, fill with banana slices and cream, top with remaining pastry slice and decorate how you wish!

This has got to be considered a healthy dessert right? It’s got nuts, fruit and dairy, must be good for you! Enjoy these little peanut butter, banana pastries, they’re a tasty treat for any time of the day!

A few weeks ago, I made these Oreo stuffed chocolate chip cookies from Picky Palate. They were delicious. My little man, Muhammad Uzayr loved them too, he even learned how to say “cookie”, I now call him my little cookie monster, for a little kid, he can devour a cookie in minutes!

Since he is so into cookies lately I decided I would whip some up for him (secretly, they were for me too). I didn’t have chocolate chips, so I had to come up with something else. I decided on peanut butter and white chocolate. I always have peanut butter in the house and I also had half a bag of white chocolate chips in the pantry. These white chocolate, peanut butter cookies were amazing, the flavours make a great combo. Especially when the cookies are still slightly warm, and the white chocolate is still gooey inside.

White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

80g Butter

50 g peanut butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 3/4 cup plain flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup roughly chopped white chocolate melts/buttons

Pre heat oven to 180C. Cream butters and brown sugar on a high speed till light and fluffy. Add in egg and vanilla and mix well. On a very low speed, tip in flour, salt and baking powder until combined. Lastly throw in chocolate chips and ensure they are mixed through well, you may need to do this part by hand. Roll dough into balls and place an inch apart on a baking sheet. I made fairly small balls.

Tip: I only baked 10 balls. The rest I left to freeze on the baking sheet, then packed them into ziplock bags once they were frozen. Here’s another secret, I would pop 1 or 2 out of the bag and put it in the microwave for 30 seconds. Who knew microwaves could cook cookies? Best thing I ever did! I had little peanut butter white chocolate treats when ever I wanted (I wanted them everyday, sometimes twice a day. Shhh!)

These white chocolate, peanut butter cookies are a must to try out! Let me know if you give it a go!

Here’s that peanut butter cake I warned you all about… Talking about warnings, this cake comes with a major warning to anyone who has a serious peanut allergy ‘Do NOT try this at home folks!’ I wouldn’t be surprised if someone 2 houses away was affected by it. But for all you peanut lovers, this is a must try!

We had lamb shanks and cous cous with a grilled haloumi salad for lunch. Very Moroccan.

After lunch we tucked into this peanut buttery goodness.

It’s 2 layers of plain cake (top and bottom) and the middle layer is peanut butter brownie. All sandwiched and covered with peanut butter buttercream. For the cake I used this Bakerella recipe, I have to admit, I think the cake may have been lost in translation, it could have been better, I don’t blame the recipe though, it’s a bit hard with measurement conversions and when using different qualities of ingredients (Bakerella is American). The peanut butter brownie recipe is also from Bakerella, slightly adapted though, basically I halved the recipe and omitted the choc chips. And the peanut buttercream is all my own.

Peanut butter brownie

3/4 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
3 tblsp butter, softened
1/4 cup peanut butter (I used crunchy)
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla

Pre heat oven to 180c and grease a cake/brownie pan. Mix and set aside dry ingredients (the recipe says sift, but who has the time). Cream together the butter and peanut butter till light and fluffy, add in sugars and beat till smooth. Add in the egg and vanilla until combined. Add the dry ingredients and combine on a low speed. Pour into pan and bake for 20-25 minutes or until skewer comes out clean. You could of course eat this peanut butter brownie all on its own, or you could load it with some butter cream, either way it tastes sooo good!

Peanut butter buttercream