Simple, Salty, Peanut Butter Cookies

Posted on October 26, 2015 by thekeyofkels

I’m not really one to go out of my way to make gluten-free treats.

That’s not to say I’m against it, I just really like gluten. I like how it holds pie crusts together. I like how it forms those beautiful layers in puff pastry. I like how it makes bagels chewy and pizzas firm and crisp.

Plus, it doesn’t wreck havoc on my body. So my love affair with most things gluten continues.

But sometimes I make something truly delicious, and as I’m stuffing one more of that delicious something in my mouth I happen to think, “You know what? This here is gluten free!”

And viola! I call it healthy.

But I wouldn’t want it to be too healthy, because then I wouldn’t be sure whether or not to call it a treat.

So, I added chocolate chips! Because, well really why not.

This recipe is an ever so slight variation on smitten kitchen’s version. Initially, I just wanted something sweet and salty. I realized how easy it was to make. (5 ingredients!) And then, I added chocolate chips. (make it 6 ingredients…)

I almost didn’t post this because the lighting in my kitchen was so awful, but shoddy photos aside, I recommend making these as soon as possible. I have so far brought them to work, to my hair stylist, and to my neighbors who so generously lent me their car when ours broke down. (damn you and your tricks 2015!)

I haven’t heard one single complaint yet.

I mean they’re packed with peanut butter and they’re gluten free so… they’re basically granola bars, right?!

xoxo

kelly

Salty Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies
variation on smitten kitchen’s recipe

makes about 30 cookies with my #40 scoop

1 3/4 cups (335 grams) packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups (450 grams) smooth peanut butter
1 1/2 cups mini chocolate chips
Coarse-grained sea salt, to finish

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the light brown sugar and eggs until smooth. Whisk in the vanilla extract, then the peanut butter until smooth and completely incorporated.

Freeze the dough in its bowl for 15 minutes, stirring it once halfway through. Scoop the dough into balls — I use a 1 2/3 tablespoons or #40 scoop. Place on prepared pan. I liked mine to look like tiny cooked balls of dough, so I put them back in the freezer for another 10 minutes before baking. If you would like yours a little more spread out, they are ready to go!

Sprinkle the dough balls with coarse-grained sea salt just before baking. Bake for 14 to 15 minutes, or until golden at the edges. Let cool on hot pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. Let cool completely before eating to get the best final texture.

Super-Quick Cream Drop Biscuits

Posted on September 4, 2014 by thekeyofkels

I’ve had an annoying cold for a little over a week now.

I’m finally on the upswing, off the Robutussin and Vicks VapoRub, but I am still getting coughing fits every now and then.

Like last night. At 3AM. When Brad finally came to bed, I immediately got out of bed and hit the couch. Because no one deserves to have to sleep next to this hacking cough. No one could even pretend to be asleep next to me during one of my fits. It’s probably the worst sounding cough ever. In the history of the world.

Ok, it’s really not that bad. But I finally drifted off to sleep again last night, and when I woke up there was a gray light shining through the living room windows. I hadn’t brought my phone with me, so I figured it was just past dawn. I stumbled back into the bedroom, where the shades were down and it was still nice and sleepy dark. Just for good measure before I zonked out again, I checked the time…

It was already 9:30! What was that crazy gray dawn light? Where was the hot summer sun that had been blazing in on us for what seemed like weeks and weeks?

Hidden, I guess. That melting hot sun was hidden behind a cool, foggy mist. And for some I-can’t-wait-until-fall reason, I jumped right out of bed, made myself a cup of tea, and got to baking.

Because baking during the day is completely out of the question when your apartment is a balmy 82 degrees before you’ve even turned the oven on. But when the high is 73 and the sun is nowhere to be seen? I preheated all the way up to 400°F.

I was making biscuits.

And not the difficult, layers of butter, rolled out, cut with biscuit cutter biscuits. Nope – I had been up half the night coughing. I hadn’t drank anything but herbal tea and orange juice and good old H2O for a week straight. This was going to be a quick, simple breakfast biscuit. I was going to whip up some scrambled eggs with ham and have a nice, hearty, foggy morning breakfast.

Thirty minutes later, as I sat down with my sleepy husband, my room temperature cup of tea (I’m really bad at tea), and my fluffy drop biscuits with eggs, the sun was shining bright through those front windows. The fog had already burnt off and the white hot sun was pouring in on us like every other sunny summer morning before this one.

But I had won breakfast. The 400° oven was already off, and the thermostat only read a cool 75. Plus, I had yummy, yummy just-baked biscuits.

xoxo

Super Quick Cream Drop Biscuits

2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, cold and cubed
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt
1 cup heavy cream
1 tbsp butter, melted
turbinado sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 400°F. Mix the first four ingredients in a food processor or stand mixer until just combined. Drop the dough in six equal parts (about 3/4 cups each) and drop onto a greased baking sheet. The less perfectly round, the better. Brush tops with melted butter and sprinkle with turbinado sugar. Bake for 18-20 minutes. Eat them piping hot right out of the oven.

Strawberry Chocolate Banana Bread

Posted on July 10, 2014 by thekeyofkels

My fridge is stuffed right now.

Not because we have a crazy amount of food. I mean, we always have sort of a crazy amount of food in our house, but this time it’s just because it’s summer.

Summer stuffs our fridge for two reasons. The first is that everything delicious is in season. Cherries and apricots are on their way out, peaches are at their peak, and tomatoes are just about ready. We’ve had to start bringing the cart to the market with us because It’s kind of impossible to carry around three Weiser Farm’s melons, a bag of peaches and a flat of tomatoes. For three hours.

Talk about a food blogger workout.

The second reason our fridge is stuffed is because we don’t have air conditioning. So if we left those tomatoes I’m in love with out on the counter for more than twelve hours, we would not only have tomato mush, but we would also have a swarm of fruit flies.

No bueno.

Somehow recently, a few bananas got left out in the fruit bowl in the summer heat. And I kept telling myself they’d be ok or that I’d finish them in the morning. But then I was having breakfast and I realized I could smell the bananas on the shelf next to me. It wasn’t a bad smell, just a “use me now or I’ll turn into a big blob of gross” smell.

One of the bananas even looked like this, so I was almost sure I’d just be throwing the whole bunch away.

Except when I peeled it, just to make sure, the banana inside looked just right…

Which, of course, meant banana bread!

I started looking up recipes. I also discovered I had a pint of strawberries that were on their last days. (Strawberries and bananas take a back seat to stone fruit in this house, I guess.) I figured I’d throw them in the mix. I started making a grocery list. I almost headed out the door.

But before I did, I just happened to stumble across a recipe for chocolate banana bread. Chocolate. Banana. Bread. I had an epiphany where I realized that the combination of chocolate and banana in bread was even better than banana and walnuts. And sounded so much more like dessert than breakfast…

Plus, I was still going to add in strawberries.

Yep. I was making Strawberry Chocolate Banana Bread.

Banana bread is one of those comfort foods that just makes me happy. It’s fluffy and light and crunchy and is kind of like a cake, but can definitely be categorized as breakfast.

This banana bread was even better. Even more decedent. Even more tempting to just cut yourself off a piece every time you happened to be near the kitchen.

I truly had to give away half of this loaf because it was so rich and delicious and amazing. But mostly because I’m supposed to be on a post-vacation detox, and I just couldn’t stop eating it.

No one I gave it to seemed to mind too much. It was almost like a giant strawberry brownie. And topped with vanilla ice-cream on a hot summer day? Oh. My. Gosh.

Give it a try. I promise you’ll be tempted to always leave your bananas out a little too long when the temperature goes up…

xoxo

Strawberry Chocolate Banana Bread

ever so slightly adapted from smitten kitchen’s Double Chocolate Banana Bread

3 medium very ripe bananas
1/2 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon table salt
1 cup flour
1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
1 cup Strawberries, chopped
3-4 Strawberries, sliced length-wise for topping

Heat your oven to 350°F. Butter a 9×5-inch loaf pan.

Mash bananas in the bottom of a large bowl. Whisk in melted butter, then brown sugar, egg, & vanilla. Use as sifter to sift baking soda, salt, cinnamon (if using), flour and cocoa powder over wet ingredients. Stir dry and wet ingredients with a spoon until just combined. Stir in chopped strawberries.

Pour into prepared pan, top in whichever design you’d like with the remaining strawberry slices, and bake 55 to 65 minutes, until a tester or toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 to 15 minutes, then run a knife around the edge and invert it out onto a cooling rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Rainy Day Blackberry Lavender Spritzer

Posted on June 5, 2014 by thekeyofkels

I try to be a pretty positive person. I really believe that you get what you give out into this world, so might as well make it happy. Might as well find a reason to smile even when it seems like everyone else has lost their minds.

A good friend used to always quote “the sun is shining somewhere, even when it rains.” I like that. I try to think of the sun shining while I’m sloshing through the puddles. It’s just the better way to spend my time. And I swear, the energy is contagious.

But man, every now and then you take your car in for an oil change two weeks before an exciting, big vacation you’ve been trying to save a tiny bit of money for, and – instead of just oil – your car needs a month’s rent worth of repairs.

Puddles. Big, muddy puddles. Maybe even without rain boots. Because who owns rain boots in Los Angeles?

After we authorized radiators and belts and whatnot, Brad hung up the phone and I made a decision.

It was officially happy hour.

The good thing (sunshine!) was we had also just gotten home from the market, where we had gone crazy buying all kinds of fruits, vegetables, cage free eggs, raisins, and pork. I figure we were stocked food-wise until at least vacation in a couple of weeks, so we would just have to live off of our bounty and spend our food budget instead on radiators…

I was starting the saving with my cocktail, going right for these giant, tart but kind of sweet blackberries that I had bought on a whim from my favorite cherry stand.

And then I muddled them up, because muddling always makes drinks feel more festive and happy. Yes, I used a blue Rolling Stones tongue glass as a shaker. Because why not? Mick Jagger makes me happy. This happy hour was all about finding happy.

Finding sunshine.

I added some gin, some of my lavender simple syrup (lavender again for the win!), and a little bit of bubble, then I threw a berry and a sprig of lavender on top. By then, my drink was so pretty that I took it outside for it’s very own photo shoot.

And I stuck a purple/blue party straw in there…

Yep, this was definitely the cocktail to cheer up with.

Well, this cocktail, plus FaceTiming with the parents who were sitting on their screened-in porch during an actual rainstorm back home.

It was kind of nice to hear the rain behind them. I forget how much I love a good rainstorm – literal or figurative. The downpour brings growth, brings new life, brings the green to plants that grow delicious blackberries for cocktails…

And although the rain might just bring mud at first, things will dry up. That sun is still out there somewhere. It’ll be back. We will work things out.

Until then, pour yourself something festive, muddle it, shake it up, and find yourself a party straw in whichever color you’d like. Because nights at home being broke aren’t so bad when you have a lovely husband to make you dinner, a pup to give you kisses and cuddles, a fruity cocktail to keep you cool, and a million ideas and projects on the horizon to devote all of your energy into.

Thanks for being my rain boots, guys. 🙂

xoxo

Blackberry Lavender Spritzer

2 oz gin (I used Bombay Sapphire)
3/4 oz lavender simple syrup
3 large blackberries
2 oz soda water

In a shaker, muddle blackberries and lavender syrup together. Add gin and fill shaker with ice, shaking to mix. Pour into glass and top with soda water. Garnish with whole berries or fresh lavender sprigs.

Lavender (or Rosemary!) Shortbread Cookies

Posted on June 3, 2014 by thekeyofkels

I bought all of that lavender. I dried it all and picked all of the buds. I made a delicious cocktail with it.

But this is what I was planning on the whole time.

I have this semi-vivid memory of being at a restaurant a long time ago and being served dessert. And whatever the dessert itself was, I remember that it was served with this amazing little rosemary shortbread cookie.

I say semi-vivid because I can still taste that cookie. I crave that cookie. But I can’t really figure out where that memory came from… I sort of remember it being a chocolate dessert. I think it was at a great restaurant in New York.

I think it was with dessert…?

All that’s important is that tiny little cookie.

After making those caramel shortbread cookies a few weeks back, I kind of got on a shortbread kick. I was noticing it everywhere. I loved it’s buttery flavor. I was fascinated with seeing bloggers garnish their versions of the caramels with lavender instead of seasalt. I had never thought to garnish something with dried flowers before.

Plus, I kept trying to place where the heck I experienced this rosemary shortbread cookie.

No use. The details of that memory are gone. I’m trying to just be thankful for the bits and pieces I have locked away to replay over and over…

Mother’s Day was coming up, and I decided that I wanted to send something sweet and little home to all the mothers that are so special in my life back on the east coast. My mother and extended mothers are always so supportive of what I do here on the blog. They are constantly commenting on the drool my recipes inspire from across the country, so I wanted to give them a little taste of what I am always working on.

I decided on toying around with that cookie obsession a little and used those gorgeous little purple buds I’d so diligently picked to make a Mother’s Day treat.

I was kind of afraid the cookies would come out tasting like soap or some other body ointment from a lotion store at the mall. Or that the buds would be dry and crunchy and weird. But if I wasn’t going to send actual flowers to all the moms, I thought cookies with flowers in them had to be just as good.

Right? Moms?

I also decided that I had to try my hand at the rosemary version since I couldn’t get it off my mind.

Once the dough was made, I split it into two parts and added lavender to one half and rosemary to the other. Even the doughs were gorgeous.

It’s not often I think how beautiful my dough is… I usually just want to eat it immediately. This one also had that effect, but not until after I had taken a billion pictures.

And after they were rolled out, cut out and baked, it was hard to decide which one was better.

I ended up sending a mix of both flavors to all of the moms back east. I’m not sure they made it there un-crumbled, but based on the couple that I saved for myself, they would have been just as amazing in tiny, little crumbly pieces.

The lemon flavor was perfect with the herbs (and flowers). And the icing was perfect and simple and sweet.

Although it wasn’t the exact flavor I remembered from that tiny shortbread cookie all those years ago, I’m happy to keep experimenting until I figure it out.

I am also curious about using thyme… But I’m sure there will be a next time very, very soon.

xoxo

Lavender Shortbread Cookies

adapted from here and here

COOKIES
1 c unsalted butter – room temperature
3/4 c confectioner’s sugar (or more, depending on the consistency after you add the lemon juice)
2 tbsp lemon juice (or 1/4 teaspoon lemon extract)
1.5 tbsp freshly grated lemon zest (about 2 large lemons, preferably Meyer)
1/8 tsp salt
1/3 c cornstarch
2.5 c all purpose flour
1 tbsp dried lavender

Cream together the butter and confectioner’s sugar until smooth, and then mix in lemon juice and zest. In a separate bowl, sift together the salt, cornstarch and flour. Add this to the butter mixture and stir until the flour coats the butter but isn’t completely worked in. Add in lavender flowers. Using your hands, lightly rub the ingredients together until the mixture is no longer dry. You will know it’s done when it forms easily into a dough ball. Flatten the dough out into a disc and wrap with plastic warp. Refrigerate for 30 minutes (or up to three days).

Preheat the oven to 325° F. Take the fully–chilled dough and place it on top of a piece of parchment. Roll the dough out to a thickness of 1/3 inch. Cut with cookie cutters. Remove the scraps from between each cookie and re–form into a flat disc. (If dough has become too soft or warm, re–refrigerate it for a few minutes before attempting to roll it out.) Transfer parchment paper to a cookie sheet and bake in the top third of the oven for 15 minutes or until the edges are just golden brown. Allow to cool on cookie racks before icing.

ICING
1 c confectioner’s sugar
2-3 tbsp lemon juice

Whisk together confectioner’s sugar and lemon juice until smooth. Set your cookies on a baking rack on top of a cookie sheet to catch excess icing. Drizzle icing lightly over cookies and garnish with a lavender bud before while the icing is still liquid. Allow icing to set and harden for about an hour before moving or stacking cookies.

Blood Orange Sorbet (without an icecream maker!)

Posted on May 30, 2014 by thekeyofkels

Blood Orange Sorbet When it gets too hot for turning on the oven, you have to resort to your Pinterest board dedicated to frozen treats.

For me, this lemon sorbet looked tantalizing. It was just what I needed to cool down. I could even maybe pour some bubbly over it and make myself a refreshing little cocktail!

But then I realized that, in the heat, my lemons had become fuzzy with mold.

Gross.

Never to fear! There was other citrus that would be equally as delicious when frozen and covered with champagne! Blood oranges!

Plus, that color!

I loved the juicy flavor that was barely tart and simply sweet.

I have an ice-cream maker attachment for my KitchenAid, but this was way easier.

And it looks so cute in those tiny bowls… I might have eaten the whole bowl before thinking about how I wanted to pour champagne on it…

homemade by thekeyofkels!

Don’t make the same mistake. Put yours in a coupe glass and have it for happy hour. The heat makes me do crazy things – like forget about champagne.

It’s unacceptable, really.

xoxo

Blood Orange Sorbet

1 cup water
1 cup sugar
1 cup freshly squeezed blood orange juice
1 tbsp grated blood orange zest

In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine sugar and water and simmer until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat. Once cooled, stir in the juice and zest. Pour the mixture into a metal baking pan and freeze until firm (2-3 hours), stirring with a fork every hour. Transfer to an airtight container to store.

THE KEY OF KELS

Tag Archives: Recipes

Simple, Salty, Peanut Butter Cookies

Super-Quick Cream Drop Biscuits

Super Quick Cream Drop Biscuits

Strawberry Chocolate Banana Bread

Strawberry Chocolate Banana Bread

Rainy Day Blackberry Lavender Spritzer

Blackberry Lavender Spritzer

Blood Orange Sorbet (without an icecream maker!)

Blood Orange Sorbet

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Super Quick Cream Drop Biscuits

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Strawberry Chocolate Banana Bread

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Blackberry Lavender Spritzer

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Lavender Shortbread Cookies

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Blood Orange Sorbet

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