Ravings of a Textual Deviant

This recipe is blatantly ripped off from Nigella Lawson, with only minor tinkering. The original is in the “kids” section of her book, and uses about 1/3 milk chocolate and 2/3 dark chocolate. Personally, I like this ever-so-slightly more grown-up version better, and the grown-ups I served it to seemed to enjoy it also.

1st Layer

• 3/4 C + 2 T creamy peanut butter - use unsweetended peanut butter only; the kind that’s 100% peanuts. I found that it didn’t really need salt, either.
• 1/4 C brown sugar
• 1 1/3 C powdered sugar
• 1/4 C softened butter (unsalted)

2nd Layer

• 11 oz dark chocolate (or cut the dark chocolate with some milk chocolate as described above, if you must)
• 1/4 t vanilla powder - I don’t recommend substituting liquid extract, because it can make your chocolate seize up. If you haven’t got the powder, just skip it.
• 1 T butter (unsalted)

Combine all the ingredients for the first layer until you have a smooth, doughy concotion. This works best if everything is at room temperature. Following Nigella’s suggestion, I used the paddle blade on my mixer and it was a snap. Press the mixture into a more-or-less even layer in a greased square cake pan. If you spent a lot of time using playdough, the texture will be quite reminiscent.

Break up the chocolate. Melt the chocolate and butter together. I did this in the microwave at 50% power; it took about three minutes, and I stopped and stirred at one-minute increments. Add the vanilla powder if you are using it, and stir well to make sure that the chocolate is nice and smooth. Pour the chocolate mixture over the peanut butter layer.

Chill the entire thing until the chocolate is firm. Turn out onto waxed paper, then flip again (carefully) so that the chocolate is once more the top layer. (I had a bit of trouble with this part; the chocolate shrank away from the edges of the pan beautifully, but the peanut butter didn’t want to release. Next time, I am going to try lining the pan with baking parchment.) Slice in squares, rectangles, triangles, or whatever. Don’t let it get too cold, though, or the chocolate layer will crack when you slice it. After it’s cut, either serve it immediately or put it back into the fridge, as both the chocolate and the peanut butter will get squishy quickly at room temp. If you stack it for storage, even temporarily, it’s probably best to put waxed paper or parchment between the layers.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 6:19 pm and is filed under Tales from the Kitchen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.