Peanut Butter No-Bake Cookies

Yeah...you know, the ones that you used to get on your green-tinted, sectional lunch tray in high school??   Those are the ones!  The traditional Halloween meal that was served in our public school usually consisted of brunswick stew, your choice of a grilled cheese or peanut butter sandwich, and then there were THESE...

...peanut butter no-bake cookies...

 They just seemed to fit this meal perfectly. They were sooooo good!

 My husband and I love making these at Christmas time too, at a time when we tend to crave the comforting foods we had as kids. We each grab 2 spoons and stand on opposite sides of the counter, piling up heaping teaspoons of warm, chocolaty, nutty, and just plain yummy cookies.  It somehow brightens our spirits during this magical, yet stressful time of year. 

Molasses Cookies

Charles, my beloved husband, kept saying to me, "You keep promising me you are going to make those, but you never do."  So I finally did.  I looked for recipes for molasses cookies, similar to the ones that I remember making in culinary school.  I remember being proud of myself, capable of producing these wonderful treats from scratch.  

Thick & cakey batch

And now I get to share them with my hubby. He took a bunch to work for their Thanksgiving feast, and I made a separate batch to take to our traditional Thanksgiving family meal. Both batches came out a little bit different.  One was flat and crunchy, and the other was thick, soft, and cakey.  Both were very tasty.  The difference very well could have been the temperature of the butter before it was put into the mixture, or the amount of time the mixer ran at each stage of mixing.

No Bun Pun Intended...Ultimate (Cinnamon) Buns

I know, I know, it's pretty cheesy......CREAM CHEESY!!! LOL.  I came up with quite a few bun puns, but I just couldn't bring myself to use them in this post...I just had to keep it simple and clean.

All puns aside, a great cinnamon bun is hard to find.  The only way I felt I could satisfy my hunger for a warm sweet, cinnamon-y bun, was to make my own.  I wanted to be able to smell them baking in my own kitchen, just enough to warm my heart.  No "Cinnabon" could replace that fresh from the oven sensation we all love so much. 

Baking any kind of yeast dough is a lengthy process...from mixing the dough, letting it rise, forming the dough, and then letting it rise again.  It was an all day process for me, but well worth the wait.  Looks like the little dough boy helped too!!

Continue reading for recipe...
(Revised from America's Test Kitchen, All-Time Best Holiday Recipes)

"Tis the Season

Norman Rockwell

'Tis the season to fill everyone's heart with something tasty to eat!  The best gift a cook could ever receive is the satisfaction on their guests' faces when they indulge in something you have prepared with your own two hands. The love that is shared during this process is priceless.  Whether it is friend to friend, family to family, friend to family, cook to cook, or cook to guest, there simply is no replacement for the joy it brings to one who loves to cook and share.  This my friends is the passion of food.