Peanut Butter Chocolate Squares

Happy Saturday Rach-

I love the picture in your last post. Were those the random items on your table? Was Caleb about to devour a mango and a cookie while peering out at Victoria through his binoculars, all after downing a beer and twirling a thingy-majig around his finger?Were you playing a memory game? Writing a story about a mango-eating peeping Tom?

Speaking of writing, I feel that most of our readers don't know that you are a published author - that several of your short stories have appeared in print. I tried to find your non-Reems Eats writing online and came across your short story for Room Magazine (the link from the link appears on the left-hand side of their page). All right, I'm done bragging, and need to move onto the topic on hand - peanut butter brownies.

After drooling over the recipe for about a year, this winter I finally tried, and was slightly disappointed with the Rebar Cookbook's Peanut Butter square. Now, after making Smitten Kitchen's peanut butter brownies, I know where Rebar wasn't working for me, and plan to meld the two into one square very soon. The Rebar square had a peanut butter-frosting which, using natural peanut butter, just wasn't the over-the-top kind of peanut butter square that I was looking for. Deb from Smitten Kitchen finished her brownie off with a chocolate ganache. This was it, the amazing chocolate finish that the squares needed. With the oatmeal-y, milk chocolate chunk Rebar base, and a chocolate finish I'm going to have one awesome square. I realize that this post is premature as this mystical, magical peanut butter chocolate square is very hypothetical at this point; however, the Smitten Kitchen squares are amazing and delicious as is, so I thought that you needed to know about them. You can imagine how much daydreaming time-and yes- much of it will happen as I happily drift off to sleep- will be devoted to the upcoming peanut butter square-recipe-morphing extravaganza.

I followed the recipe to the dot - I even, after much deliberation, added the extra egg yolk that I thought was unnecessary. In the future I will not be adding this additional yolk, but I am trying something crazy and unorthodox: I have decided that the first time I make a recipe I am going to follow the recipe exactly as stated. Then, if I like the recipe, I will administer my usual tinkering on subsequent attempts. I know, crazy things are brewing in my kitchen. With these great intentions, I did make slightly less of that ganache than the recipe called for- but I did add that egg yolk.

OK, Finn is out with Mike on their 'Saturday Morning Adventure' (Translation: I get to drink coffee, read the paper, and have a shower in glorious solitude) and I need to get back to the Travel Section for my vicarious vacation.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of The Peanut Butter Square