Tag Archives: Peanut Butter
Crispy Chocolate Peanut Butter & Raspberry Bites
Happy Valentine’s Day! And here’s a little sweet treat for you and your sweeties. Crispy, chocolaty, bite size peanut butter and raspberry jam filled bites of blissful sweetness, need I say more? These are like a grown up version of chocolate peanut butter cups, meet crispy rice treats, but even better.
Layers of good quality chocolate like Ghiradelli or Lindt, sandwiched with my favorite French raspberry jam from Bonne Mamman and topped with silky smooth milk chocolate mixed with crispy rice cereal (I actually use sprouted brown rice cereal, just because). These treats are great for a crowd, loved by little ones and adults alike, but they also keep really well in the fridge, making them a perfect little everyday treat, just for you!
Tofu with Tahini Peanut Lime Sauce
On any given day, you can find stacks of cook books around my house, many of them mine, but also a constant rotation from the library, there are just SO many great new books coming out that speak to me like never before, thanks in large part to the amazing and growing array of healthy food bloggers on the scene. One of the latest I’ve been happily perusing through is Anna Jones – A Modern Way to Eat – lots of yummy looking recipes and I’m working on more than a few, new ideas but plenty you’ve seen before (if you read as many blogs and cookbooks as I do!). One such recipe, not so different than others I’ve seen and even made, like this, this and that, but it still spoke to me and spurred me to create a new favorite around here, was Anna’s Maple Peanut California Wraps. It has so many of the flavors I just love, nutty peanut butter and Tahini, maple syrup, miso, soy and citrus. Of course, I did change up her recipe a bit, varied the measurements of ingredients and most notably swapped out Anna’s lemon for lime and replaced her tempeh for tofu.
What I ended up with was a delicious Tahini peanut lime sauce, perfect drizzled over grilled tofu with greens or rice or soba, yum.
If you’re not a fan of tofu, although if that’s how you feel I urge you to try this it may change your mind and may even change your life, really, truly. BUT, this sauce would also work perfectly with grilled chicken (think chicken satay) or even shrimp, as a sauce over soba noodles or nutty brown rice, mixed into shredded cabbage for an awesome slaw, this sauce IS that good, now what are you waiting for go try it.
Now let’s talk a little bit about lime….Forever a fan of citrus, I just love the scent and taste of all things lemon, lime & orange, but lemon has always been my favorite, I am finding myself now using lime more and more, I think lime may be my new fave, sorry lemon I still love you, but. Lime just wakes up the flavor in sauces, dressings and soups without as much of a hit of acid like you get from lemon, it works in sweet and savory and even just a squeeze of lime over some greens works as a nice light salad. You can even mix up lemon, lime and orange to replicate the Japanese yuzu, fresh and clean tasting, you just can’t go wrong with citrus.
Tofu in Tahini-Peanut-Lime Sauce
Author: Sweet Green Kitchen’s Jen Jones
Adapted from Anna Jones’ – A Modern Way to Eat –
Ingredients:
Tofu –
1 package extra firm or super firm tofu – 12 – 15 ounces / sprouted if you can find it
Coconut oil
Sea salt
Optional: black sesame seeds
Tahini-Peanut-Lime Sauce –
4 tablespoons natural creamy peanut butter
2 tablespoon tahini (sesame paste)
2 tablespoon miso paste – white or red or a mix
2 tablespoon maple syrup
4 teaspoons (1 Tbsp + 1 tsp) lite soy sauce – gmo free and gluten free
Zest of 1 lime
Juice of 1 whole lime – 1 1/2 limes
1-3 tablespoons water
Directions:
Remove the tofu from the package, drain and carefully press out as much liquid as you can.
Heat a large non stick skillet over medium-high flame. Pour in enough coconut oil to cover the pan, sprinkle the pan with salt (flaky sea salt if you have).
Once the tofu is fully pressed, cut into about 8 slices or 16 triangles if you prefer, add the slices to the hot pan. Don’t stir around, cook until each slice is golden brown, then flip and cook the other side, lowering or raising the temperature as needed or adding additional coconut oil. Once the tofu is cooked on both sides, remove from the pan to a cutting board and allow to cool a bit, then cut each piece either in half or in thirds lengthwise so you have finger sized pieces of tofu or leave as is if you already cut into triangles.
While the tofu cooks mix all of the sauce ingredients together in a bowl, starting with the juice of 1 lime, adding more if needed, to taste and adding enough water to get the consistency you like.
Spoon the sauce over the tofu or use it as a dip if you prefer. Sprinkle with black sesame seeds if you like. Yummy warm or cold. Great for leftovers. Enjoy!
This makes lots of sauce, so you may have extra to enjoy as you will.
Recipe notes:
Tofu with Tahini Peanut Lime Sauce with mixed greens & mint & a squeeze of lime
I served this yummy tofu on top of a bed of mixed salad greens and shredded carrots with an extra squeeze of lime and a few sprigs of mint, for a delicious healthy lunch. The tofu would also be great wrapped up in summer rolls with mint or basil, or stir into soba noodles topped with the tofu, shredded carrots, mint and chopped scallions for a more substantial meal or simply with a side of brown rice & steamed veggies with extra sauce drizzled over the top OR in my next post with cabbage slaw and ginger roasted sweet potatoes!
Tofu Beets and Greens Summer Rolls with Peanut Miso Lime Dipping Sauce
Perfect Peanut Butter Cookies with/or/without jam or chocolate
No butter, no eggs, no guilt, but sinfully delicious! This is Skyler’s all time favorite cookie. Peanut butter and maple syrup make these soft and tender cookies melt in your mouth, perfection.
I adapted this recipe from Dreena Burton’s “Vive le Vegan and after years of making Skyler’s Favorite Peanut Butter Cookies, along came 9 years younger brother Evan, who thinks everything in life is better with jelly, including big sister’s favorite cookie recipe! So, as soon as he was old enough to know what was going on, he decided to up the ante and request/demand that his favorite condiment, raspberry jam, be added to the mix and lo and behold the Perfect PB & J Cookie was born. And…since we were already messing with Skyler’s perfect cookie world, why not mess just a little bit more and add in everybody’s favorite cookie condiment…chocolate! Really I don’t know what took me so long to put two and two and another two and two together, maybe it was the fact that Skyler loved the original version so much we were afraid to mess with success, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. But now, even though the original is still a favorite, we never make peanut butter cookies without adding a little jam and a few chocolate chips to at least a few.
With or without the jelly or chocolate, these cookies are a family favorite and devoured by friends as well. A perfect after school snack for the kids and me! They are soft and a little bit crumbly, perfect for anyone who avoids eggs and dairy and delicious for all.
Perfect Peanut Butter OR PB & J OR PB with Chocolate Center Cookies
Author: Sweet Green Kitchen’s Jen Jones
Adapted from Dreena Burton’s “Vive le Vegan”
Makes about 24-26 cookies
Ingredients:
¾ cup All Purpose Unbleached Flour
¾ cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
1 ½ teaspoon Baking Powder
¾ teaspoon Baking Soda
3 Tablespoon Granulated Sugar (I use organic evaporated cane sugar)
½ teaspoon Sea Salt
½ cup + 2 Tablespoon Natural Unsweetend Peanut Butter (do not substitute)
¾ cup Pure Maple Syrup (the good stuff, no Aunt Jemima or the like)
½ teaspoon Molasses
1 ½ teaspoon Pure Vanilla Extract
4 ½ Tablespoon Canola Oil (or other oil of your choice)
Optional Additions:
Raspberry Jam – (Strawberry, Apricot, Blackberry, etc, whatever your family prefers)
About ¼ cup Chocolate Chips – I use 60% Cocoa Chips
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 F.
In a medium bowl, add in all dry ingredients and whisk until evenly combined.
In a liquid measure, pour in the maple syrup, molasses, vanilla extract and oil. Then add in ½ cup of the peanut butter. Stir thoroughly to combine.
Add the wet mixture to the dry and stir well. Next add in the remaining 2 Tablespoon of peanut butter, but do not mix completely. You want ribbons of peanut butter throughout.
Use 2 ungreased cookie sheets. Measure out rounded tablespoons of batter onto the cookie sheet, 12-13 per sheet. Do not flatten the dough.
If adding Jam – Using a finger or the back end of a butter knife, make small depressions into the center of each peanut butter dough ball. Add about ¼ teaspoon of Jam into the center well of each cookie.
If adding Chocolate – Using a finger or the back end of a butter knife, make small depressions into the center of each peanut butter dough ball. Add about 3-5 chocolate chips into the center well of each cookie. Note, that the chocolate chips will soften while baking but not completely melt together. Once baked, while the cookies are cooling, if you like, swirl together the softened chocolate chips in each cookie’s center, using the tip of a butter knife or spoon, until you have one blob of chocolate, instead of separate chips or leave as is if you prefer, great either way.
Bake for 10-11 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool a few minutes on the cookie sheet. They will fall apart if moved too soon. After they have cooled slightly, move the cookies with a spatula to a cooling rack and Enjoy!
Recipe Notes: This recipe is Vegan, use Vegan chocolate chips to keep it that way or non Vegan if it’s not necessary for you. Full disclosure, I don’t use Vegan chocolate, my favorite for these and most other recipes involving chocolate, is Ghiradelli 60% Cocoa chips, they are a little bigger than your average chocolate chip and perfectly bittersweet.
A note about the peanut butter, I only use all natural peanut butter with no added sugar or any other ingredients but salt. Sometimes, I’ll make my own at the health food store which works perfectly here as well.
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