Amazing Peanut Butter Cookies,

with good texture!

For the Graduate Colloquium.

The recipe's here.

Ingredients. Mostly peanut butter and brown sugar. 2 Tbsp!!! of vanilla.

Mixing the ingredients.

Try try again?

(Actually it's just a stupid (accidental) camera trick. These haven't even been near the oven.)

Ready to bake (well, after I add salt).

Hot out of the oven.

The cookies were amazing. Chewy and Peanut Buttery, but with almost a caramel taste. The chocolate and the salt make them to die for. (Make sure you use good chocolate. The 60% cocoa definitely helped the taste.) The Amateur Gourmet said they were some of the best cookies she'd ever had. I can understand this sentiment. Well worth making again.

Bacon Sweet Potato Pasta

Inspired by Iron Chef America.

(No pictures this time.)

I made this for a dinner party about a month ago. It was supposed to be a filling for ravioloni (really big Ravioli), but it also works well as a "topping" for pasta. If you use it as a filling for ravioloni, put an egg yoke in each raviolone so you'll have runny yokes for a sauce. (That's what they did on the show.) But it works really well even without the egg yoke.

Serves 10 or 11

Ingredients

Three large sweet potatoes

12 ounces goat cheese

8 ounces ricotta cheese

One package of bacon

Salt and pepper to taste

Bake the sweet potatoes fully, and remove the skin. Mash the potatoes in a mixer with a paddle attachment. Add the cheese and stir till incorporated. Fry the bacon till cooked fully, but not crispy. Pat off the excess grease (but don't get it too dry). Stir into the Sweet Potato and cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve over pasta (preferably fresh) or with an egg yoke as a filling for raviolone.