Peanut butter and prized possessions.

I have so much food to catch up on! This post is about a bunch of peanut buttery goodness I made around graduation time this May.

First are no-bake peanut butter chocolate bars that I made for the bonfire my friends and I had to celebrate the end of the school year. Normally, I equate no-bake with quick and easy, but these were a hefty undertaking! They comprise three layers: a graham cracker layer with chocolate chips, a peanut butter cream layer, and a chocolate layer with peanut butter drizzles on top:

Between crushing up the graham crackers, creaming the margarine by hand for the bottom two layers (as I have no mixer), and melting the chocolate, these were a labor of love. But they went over well! They are very, very rich, and I couldn’t eat more than a bite, myself.

Second are some peanut butter cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Actually, they are chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter filling and chocolate ganache. They were supposed to have frosting on top as well, but I didn’t have time for that before I had to take them to wherever they were going. Even though I didn’t get to make frosting swirlies, I did get to use my frosting tips for the filling. Among all my kitchen gadgets, I think this set of frosting tips that I got for Christmas a couple years ago is my most prized. I throw a minor tantrum if I think one of the tips is missing.

The best part of these cupcakes was the peanut buttercream frosting filling. I like this frosting for two reasons: first, I like how the word “butter” belongs to both “peanut butter” and “buttercream” in the name. Second, I like how it tastes like love.

Here are the finished cuppas. Note the spiffy new silicon cupcake liners I have. They are second only to my frosting tips in the hierarchy of beloved kitchen possessions.

Those of you who have kept up with my blog thus far probably think that the only things I eat are combinations of chocolate and peanut butter in dessert form. In truth, I mostly make these things for special occasions, and I post about them because they are more beautiful and exciting than the curry I had for dinner. It was quite a good curry too. I really should post about it.

Bonus picture! I am officially a college graduate. That’s me in the middle with two of my very bestest college friends. I miss them already.

I still have a huge backlog of food porn to talk about! It includes pumpkin-coconut bread, ice cream, pancakes, lemon-blueberry bundt cake, and mutant peppers, to name a few.