There’s a whole lotta nuts goin’ on in these babies.  And gurrrl, lemme tell you they put your bake sale peanut butter cookies to SHAME!  No little fork marks and no hershey kisses.

 Just pure, mother effin’ peanut flavor.  And here’s how to do it.

Pulse 1 1/2 C peanuts in a food processor until finely chopped.

Whisk 3/4 C flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Set aside.

Whisk 3 tablespoons melted butter, 1/2 C creamy peanut butter, 1/2 C sugar, 1/2 C brown sugar, 3 tablespoons milk and 1 egg. 

Add flour mixture to wet mixture. Stir in peanuts.

Using a tablespoon cookie scoop, plop some balls on a cookie sheet then flatten the balls down a bit with your fingers (aim for a 2 in. diameter). 

Bake for 15-18 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Rotate sheets halfway through.

Let ‘em cool. Then microwave 3/4 C creamy peanut butter and 3 Tablespoons butter for about 40 seconds. Sift in 1 C powdered sugar. Using the same cookie scoop, blob some filling into the center of a cookie and smash another cookie on top of it, pressing evenly so the filling spreads to the edges. 

If you would like the other filling recipes shoot us a message!  This recipe was brought to our adoring fans by America’s Test Kitchen! You can follow them on tumblr as well!

Our Friday evening started innocently enough… Mara and I had been texting all day about our very first recipe post: Banana and Peanut Butter Ice Cream Sammiches.  We found a super easy banana ice cream recipe that reads like this:

Ingredients:

Bananas

Directions:

Slice and freeze bananas.  Whirrrr them around in the food processor until smooth. Eat. 

And you know what? That shit worked! Well, kind of.  We had to add a little bit of the wet (heavy cream) to get some banana slush going, and sure enough it turned “ice cream-ish.”  And then we added some honey…and then peanut butter….and a healthy dash of salt.  

Now, we could have stopped there. It would have been perfectly fine to just firm up that banana slush and then slap it onto the sandwich halves.  But we didn’t stop there. Oh no,  we couldn’t stop there! We have a responsibility to our 12 loyal followers! We must go further!  And we were also kind of drunk! Yeah!

And that crazy idea was CUSTARD!

Since we had already ruined what made this recipe fairly healthy by adding more cream and sugar, why not go the extra step to just make it really taste like ice cream.

***(IMPORTANT NOTE: Here at C&MMF, we DO NOT CARE about making healthy recipes. The charm of the original recipe was how EASY it was. And we get to use our food processor.)

What is a custard? Basically a delicious concoction of egg yolks, cream, sugar and vanilla.  It’s super easy.  I mean, hell, we were wasted and it turned out great!

Above: Whisking egg yolks and sugar.  And it’s also a great shot of Mara’s rings. 

Below: After adding just boiled cream. Whisk like you mean it until mixture coats the back of a spoon. 

Then fold that into the banana mixture.

Whip cream to medium peaks. Then fold that into the banana/custard mixture.

Now pop all that into the freezer to firm up a bit.  You don’t want it frozen, because then you won’t be able to fill the sandwiches neatly. The recipe for the sandwich halves is a basic whoppie pie recipe and those little bastards cook up real nice and puffy, but you should hollow the halves out a bit to make more room for the ice cream. 

I’m sure you can follow the recipe from this picture alone. 

H O O RAY !   W E   D I D   I T !   I C E   C R E A M   S A M M I C H ! 

See recipes below!

Chocolate Sammiches

Ingredients:

1 2/3 C Flour

2/3 C unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 Tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature

4 Tablespoons vegetable shortening

1 C dark brown sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup milk

CAT & MARA’S SECRET INGREDIENT: 1 C (scant) crushed up chocolate wafer cookies….

How to do it:

Pre-heat oven to 375. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Pop yo’ oven rack in the center.

Sift first 4 ingredients together. 

In a mixing bowl, beat together butter, shortening and brown sugar just until combined.  Crank yo’ shit up to medium and beat until fluffy and smooth, roughly 3 minutes.  Add the eggy weggy and vanilla and beat for another 2 minutes.

Add half the flour mixture and half of milk to  batter. Beat just until incorporated, beware of creating a flour storm. Scrape yo’ bowl down and add remaining flour mixture and the rest of the milk, beat until combined.  Fold in secret ingredient, if desired. 

With a spoon or cookie scoop drop about 1 Tablespoon of batter onto one of the cookie sheets. Flatten them slightly with a spatula and space about 2 inches apart. They will spread a bit during baking.  Bake one sheet at a time for about 10 minutes, or until the cakes spring back when pressed gently.  Remove from oven and let cool on the sheet before transferring them to a rack to cool completely.  Repeat until finished.

No-Churn Banana Ice Cream

(Loosely adapted and mostly made up.)

Ingredients:

3 or 4 Nearly Rotten Bananas

2 tablespoon peanut or almond butter

1 tablespoon honey

Pinch of salt

1/2 cup whole milk

3 egg yolks

1 cup heavy whipping cream

How to do it:

Remove bananas from the peel. Slice into coins and freeze until not-quite-rock-hard. 

In your food processor, buzz up the frozen bananas, nut butter, honey, and salt. Taste for seasoning. Adjust until you think it tastes good. Set aside. (if you’re a slow cooker, put the banana food in the freezer while you do the rest so it doesn’t get too soupy.)

In a separate bowl, whisk together egg yolks and sugar. Set aside.

In your fanciest All-Clad pot, heat the milk until it boils. Remove from heat.

Temper the egg yolks by slowly whisking half of the boiled milk into the egg/sugar mixture. Then pour the mixture into the hot pot.

Return to the stove on low heat, whisking constantly, until the mixture thickens. Do not let the eggs curdle. Keep whisking those bad boys until the mixture coats the back of the spoon. (See Cat’s photo. See spot run.)

Remove from heat.  Slowly incorporate the custard with the banana mixture. Chill the mixture in an ice bath or pop it in the freezer for a few while you whip your cream. If you move with haste, it might still be cold.

Whip the cream to medium peaks, then fold the whipped cream into the banana stuff. You just made No-Churn Banana Ice Cream.

Now, one of two things is going to happen: 

A. it’s late, and you’re drunk. So pop your creation in the freezer and return to it at a later date. 

or

B. it’s late, you’re drunk, and you’re still hungry. In which case, you should still freeze the ice cream for a little bit until it’s thick and cold enough to be scoop-able. I say maybe an hour or so. I don’t know how cold your freezer is, so you do the math here. Personally, my blast chiller works wonders and reduces the temperature of cooked food from 70 °C (158 °F) to +3 °C (37 °F) or below within 90 minutes! Wow!

When the ice cream is manageable, scoop it onto the sandwich halves and press together very gently. Very Gently. VERY GENTLY. For reals. Those mothers are soft. Be gentle. 

Freeze again to harden up and eat shortly thereafter.

xoxoxo

**Recipe Notes: The no churn banana and peanut butter ice cream recipe was adapted from Claire Robinson, host of 5 Ingredient Fix. The chocolate sandwich halves recipe is courtesy of Sara Billingsley and Amy Treadwell from the indispensable cookbook, Whoppie Pies.  THANKS LADIES!

And although we have inevitably reached the bottom of the seemingly endless vanilla bean sugar jar, it was well worth it, for Mara and I have created the ultimate Banana and Peanut Butter Ice Cream Sandwiches. Soon, my friends. Soon and very soon. 

Now, Mara and I have lots of great ideas for this blog. Eventually, it will be rife with amazingly shot and edited videos about our escapades in the kitchen. And sure enough, we will be recognized on a national level for our unique cinematic perspective on even the simplest kitchen tasks, such as peeling a potato.That will lead us to creating an award winning original score inspired by frying bacon…and the accolades go on and on.

But until then, we have some photos to share with you.

                                    Cat and Mara Make Whoopie(s).

One wintery LA night almost exactly a year ago, Mara came over to make some dinner, talk some shit, drink some booze and smoke some cigs.  We had talked about making dessert, but by this point we were kind of drunk (note the empty wine glass and meat cleaver) so I figured dessert was probably not in the cards.  But the mood struck and Mara demanded we make whoopies.  This recipe was from a box holiday mix that a friend re-gifted me and the results were not surprising.  They were alright…the peppermint frosting was pretty sweet, but the cakes froze nicely and I promptly forgot about them until June, when I finally threw them away. 

At the time Whoopies were the new cupcakes, which was great, but it meant we only had a limited amount of time to capitalize on their uniqueness before some stupid Beverly Hills housewife opened a whoopie pie bakery or Food Network started some dumb new reality show called “Whoopie Impossible” and ruined the novelty for all of us.