Recipe Reviews! Week 19

So…if you're trying to not eat sweets, these recipes are probably not for you. You might want to skip reading this post, actually, as all the recipes are dessert, sweet type of recipes! For some reason I have made a lot of desserts the past two weeks, and I thought I'd just share them all at once. First on the list is....

Peanut Butter Fingers

I found this recipe in both my cookbook and Jason's. Jason's recipe comes from his Grandma and it is identical to mine except for the amount of
chocolate chips: Grandma's recipe says 1 cup, my recipe says 1/2 cup. I went somewhere in the middle with about 3/4 cup of chocolate bits when I made this. There was one other recipe difference in the directions: one says to grease the pan, the other says grease AND flour the pan. Since I only have glass baking dishes, and I find them extremely hard to flour, I skipped the flouring part.

 The Honest Review: If you have never had these home-made Peanut Butter Fingers, then you haven't lived! Especially if you like chocolate and peanut butter together. Oh my lands, are these good!! Or, maybe it's just me and my family that can't stop eating these. If I recall correctly, most of my siblings also love these bars. They really are delicious and a great dessert treat! The only thing I would say is that I thought there might be just a tad too much chocolate on top, so I will be making note to only use a 1/2 cup of chocolate chips. Otherwise, I highly recommend trying this recipe if  you've never had it! This recipe is staying in our collection.

Tasteeos Bars

I came home from work one night and Jason was finishing up making these. "I wanted something sweet to munch on," he said, "and this is what we had the ingredients for." This recipe looked very familiar, and I told him I was sure that this is very similar to something I have made before.

The Honest Review: These are a crunchy, sweet snack, and I will admit that it was easy to just keep eating them. But, I personally felt like the cheerio element was a traitor for some reason. I also thought that a little dark chocolate on top wouldn't hurt!! Jason thought that this recipe was similar to something called "Haystacks." We briefly looked for a "Haystack" recipe, but didn't find one. I'm pretty sure I have a similar recipe that doesn't take cheerios, but I haven't dug it out yet. This "Tasteeos" recipe was good, but not stellar in our opinion. This recipe is tossed from our collection.

Black-Bottom Banana Bars

In case you aren't familiar with the old Taste of Home magazine recipe format, I cut this out of their magazine many years ago. I have never made it before, but I had some bananas that needed used and just barely enough cocoa to make a 1/2 recipe. (Yes, I even halved the 1 egg!) I made this recipe the other week when I was craving something chocolate and all I had was 2 tablespoons of cocoa in the house! Something that the recipe author noted on the front of the card was that these bars are even better the second day. So, we made sure to not pass judgement until the second day.

The Honest Review: Wow! We were very impressed with this recipe! It was very delicious! We tried them right out of the oven and loved them! And, we ate some after they cooled, and they were still delicious! They are a very light, moist, spongey kind of bar with just the right balance of sweet and chocolate and banana. They were not overly sweet, either- just the right amount. We did save some to eat the second day to see if they were even better.....we didn't like them as much the second day. I did put them in the fridge overnight because I didn't want them to mold (they are really moist!). So I don't know if that took away from their amazing-ness, or if they are just best on the first day. Either way, we really liked these bars and I would highly recommend trying them. This recipe is staying in our collection.
Alterations: Try making in mini-muffin tins for a bite-sized treat.

Banana Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Banana Peanut Butter Cupcakes cont.

I honestly have no idea where I got this recipe from. I obviously wrote it down from somewhere at some point in the last 10 years. I have never made it, though, so this was a first. I made the full cupcake recipe, but decided to do only a half recipe of the icing as I usually find that icing recipes make waaaay too much icing. Well, this one did not. I needed to make the full icing recipe in order to modestly cover the cupcakes.

The Honest Review: Jason and I both tried the cupcakes without icing first, and we thought they were really quite tasty; a nice peanut butter banana blend. It was definitely a cake texture and not a muffin texture, and I would say it was a fairly light cake. We both commented that some chocolate chips might be a nice addition to the cupcake. After Jason iced the cupcakes (I had to leave for work), we both thought that it kind of ruined the cupcake. We couldn't quite pin-point what it was, but it did not taste near as good with the icing. I tried putting some chocolate Framingham Fudge Sauce (recipe below) on top of the peanut butter icing, but that didn't help. I may try making this recipe one more time, without the icing but with the chocolate chips, and see how it tastes. So, the jury is still out on this recipe.

Framingham Fudge Sauce

I'm not quite sure where this recipe comes from, but it is one my family has had since I was a little kid. And, it was quite the treat whenever someone made Framingham Fudge Sauce! I needed this sauce for another dessert recipe that is later in this post. I needed a 1/2 batch of sauce for my dessert recipe, and I wanted some for leftovers (I really didn't need any leftover!), so I actually made a 3/4 batch of this sauce.

The Honest Review: This little half-pint jar was the leftover 1/4 batch of sauce. Jason actually hasn't tried this by itself yet. I enjoyed some on my vanilla ice cream the other night! I will say that I must not have the patience that it takes to make this recipe, as I didn't cook it long enough for the sugar to completely dissolve. The texture is a little bit grainy, and I think it is supposed to be satiny smooth. But, it still tastes delicious! It is a nice, dark, rich chocolate sauce that you only need just the right amount - not too much, and not too little. Besides vanilla ice cream, I can't remember what else we used to eat with this sauce. What would you eat with it? This recipe is staying in our collection.

Chocolate Lovers Torte

This recipe has been in my family since I can remember. I have no idea where it came from, actually. I made this for the 4th of July when Jason's parents were here- that way we wouldn't be eating it ALL by ourselves! I did make a 1/2 recipe, as I didn't think we needed a full 9x13 pan of it! I actually used our 7x11 dish, and the half batch still filled it pretty full. This is the dessert recipe for which I needed the Framingham Fudge Sauce recipe from above.

The Honest Review: This recipe is an investment to make, and eat! It is over-the-top delicious, in our opinion. But again, if you don't like chocolate and peanut butter together, then you probably won't understand our love for it. It really is good, though. When you make and eat this dessert, you are throwing all caution to the wind as it is not for the diet and health conscious! But, if you're going to live a little, I'd recommend splurging on this dessert! I am pretty sure that this is my sister Rachel's favorite dessert, and probably pretty close to the favorite for the rest of my siblings. One small side-note to this recipe: make sure to use a good, high-quality, not-likely to bend or break utensil to cut and remove it from the pan. I believe more than one spatula and spoon has been bent, or broken, cutting into this cake over my lifetime. It is as solid as a rock after being in the freezer, but the delicious taste is worth a few broken utensils! This recipe is staying in our collection.

That concludes my desserts for the past couple of weeks. Hopefully you all didn't gain any pounds reading about them! I may have gained a few from eating them..... I'm not sure why I've been on such a chocolate dessert kick, but it sure has been a sweet couple of weeks!

Tell me, which of these desserts would you want to try?