Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirls

This is a rendition of a recipe I got from my good friend Susannah (thegirlwiththecake.blogspot.com) and made some changes to:

Here's what you will need:

2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cups ground peanuts

3 1/2 ounces unsalted butter, cubed

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 egg, lightly beaten

2 tablespoon iced water

1/4 cup peanut butter

Here's what you do:

1. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Place the flour and nuts in an electric mixer and add the butter and sugar. Process until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the combined egg and water.

2. Blend just until the mixture forms a dough. Turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 30 seconds or until the dough is nice and smooth.

3. Place the dough onto a large sheet of parchment paper and roll out into a rectangle that is 10x14 inches. {Make sure that all of the edges are even, straight, and that this looks exactly like a rectangle, or you will end up with a horribly uneven roll!}

4. Spread the dough with the peanut butter.

5.Using the parchment paper to lift the dough, roll up from the long side in a Swiss-roll style.

6. Wrap the rolls tightly in parchment paper and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

7. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cut the roll into 1/2 slices with a thin and sharp knife, wiping the blade between each cut.

8.Place the slices on the prepared baking tray and bake for 15 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Return to the Kitchen

It all began with a little girl with a passion for food. Not cooking, FOOD.

**I could probably just stop there and anyone who knows me knows that this elusive "little girl" is me. I've loved food from a very early age. So much, in fact, that my first full sentence was "Look, Mommy, McDonald's!"

Sad story, I know. But at least I could recognize the signature golden arches.**

As I was saying...FOOD. Eventually, this passion turned into a desire to make her own food. The little girl was ecstatic when she received her first cookbook complete with recipes for things such as fruit-filled Jello, homemade Popsicles, & her personal favorite: English muffin pizza. The first time her first 4 English muffin pizzas emerged from the oven, everything in the child's life seemed to fall into place. And as her half-toothless mouth bit into the warm, gooey, cheesy, crunchy goodness of it all, it was decided. She would learn how to cook. And cook she did. Her greatest joy was baking things such as chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cake, chocolate oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip muffins, brownies...basically anything containing chocolate. This love for baking developed into a love for making breakfast food...fruit salads, waffles, pancakes, bacon, eggs, omelets...she loved it all. But eventually, the child was struck ill and her passion died along with her beating heart...

I kid, I kid. But really. The passion died, but the child was not struck ill. Alas, she was struck with a far worse fate: school. And on top of this, she hit her teenage years, which killed virtually every dream that she'd ever had. Yeah, she wasn't gonna be a firefighter...and she most certainly was not going to be making anymore English muffin pizzas.

What is the point of this story, you ask?

The point is, here I am today, wasting my life away (usually on Facebook). And here I am complaining about the food I am fed on a day-to-day basis. So I decided it was time I did something about it.

The journey began yesterday with a meal of Minestrone with Rotini & Chocolate-Peanut Butter Swirls (stolen from the lovely Miss Susannah Prince). I have no pictures to document this step (or stumble) in the journey, but I can tell you that it is quite apparent that I've spent a decent amount of time away from the kitchen.