Serious Eats: Recipes
This Valentine's Day, Go Nuts
I love chocolate. But when it comes to Valentine's Day it can be a bit of a cliché: the Whitman's Samplers with their impossible-to-decipher filling maps; the miniature heart-shape drugstore candy bars; the Hershey's Kisses, once simply silver, suddenly dressed in every shade of pink and red.
This year, why not make your honey swoon by baking her (or him) a special treat made with that other creamy, sweet, incredibly rich and decadent substance--peanut butter?
From blondies and cookies to cheesecakes and freezer pies, there are dozens of recipes that call for a jar of Jif. My personal favorite is one for peanut butter biscotti that I've been making and refining for years. In large part, it's based on a recipe from The Ultimate Peanut Butter Book by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough, except I use creamy peanut butter instead of chunky, add in chopped peanuts and peanut butter chips, and at the very end, dip each cookie in--you guessed it--chocolate. After all, the two flavors are a match made in heaven.
About the author: Lucy Baker is a graduate student in the writing program at Sarah Lawrence College. Before returning to school to pursue an MFA, she was an assistant cookbook editor at HarperCollins. She lives in Brooklyn and is currently obsessed with all things fennel.