Blog Archives
Test the Recipe: Grandma Lil’s Peanut Butter Cookies
“Test the Recipe” is a recurring column on PCFG where we test vintage (anything published before 1990) recipes and see if they stand the test of time or need updating. In this post we test the recipe as exactly as possible for the most accurate outcomes. Those recipes that need updating will be featured later in a “We Can Do It Better” post.
I’m mixing things up a little bit with this Test the Recipe post because I didn’t find it in a book; I found it in my grandma’s recipe box. As such, I don’t know the actual date on it, but considering the recipe is my great-grandmother’s I think it’s fairly safe to assume that the recipe falls within the time frame I established. I think a lot of the Christmas cookies my mom makes use my great-grandma’s recipes, but she doesn’t usually make peanut butter cookies, so I wanted to give these a try. I really enjoy peanut butter, and cookies are great, so I was excited to have some peanut butter cookies to eat. I’m sure my great-grandma didn’t come up with the recipe totally from scratch, but I don’t know where she may have gotten the original recipe from either.
Great-grandma Lillian
The Snack Report: Thomas’ Blueberry English Muffins
I feel like I start a lot of my Snack Reports with, “I was in the grocery store and saw this on sale.” But that’s really how I end up finding most of the stuff I review. Some foodstuffs I hear about in advance and seek out to review, but a lot I find while just wandering around the grocery store, and if it’s on sale, I’m game for giving it a try. So…I was in the grocery store the other day and saw these blueberry English muffins on sale. Actually I saw a different Thomas’ product on sale first, but it’s going to be on sale for longer than these are, so I ended up getting them first. I had tried the limited edition apple pie English muffins a few months ago and enjoyed them, so I figured blueberry English muffins were worth a shot as well; I like both blueberries and English muffins.
The Snack Report: ポッピン クッキン つくるう! おべんとう! Poppin’ Cookin’ Make! Bento!
I must confess something. I am a straight dude whom has fought in muaythai and karate, whom plays sports and video games, and whom has multiple badass tattoos… and yet, I am an absolute sucker for over-the-top cutesy adorable stuff. Puppies, stuffed animals, Kirby’s Dream Land, you name it. I am an unabashed fan of super cute stuff. So frigging naturally I would see this and go OH MY GOD WE NEED TO BUY IT…
AAAH!! KAWAII DESUYO ^_^ ^o^!!!
Food 101: Tostones aka Fried Plantains
I created a monster. I turned Erik into a tostones monster. My first experience with plantains was tostones. I saw Alton Brown make them on Good Eats and was intrigued, so I made them. Erik’s first experience with plantains was them just cooked and in a sauce as a side dish at a Colombian restaurant. He couldn’t understand how I liked plantains so much (since not-fried plantains, while not bad, are definitely not as good as their fried brethren). So I told him about how amazing fried plantains are and that I would make them for him sometime so he could see for himself. I think he may still have been a bit skeptical. But boy did his mind change after he had them. Now we cannot go to a grocery store without Erik sneaking some plantains into our cart to make with dinner. As I said, I’ve created a monster.
This is what you’ll be starting with
I’ve talked about plantains before in a review of plantain chips. As I mentioned in that post, fried plantains are pretty much the best French fry you’ll ever have. Because they’re so starchy, when you smush them and fry them they almost become self-battering. It can be hard to believe that they haven’t been dipped in something other than water. They’re crunchy, starchy, and salty in all the best ways. You’re definitely going to want to give these a try.
We Can Do It Better: Glazed Pineapple Cookies
So, I fully intended to remake these cookies a lot sooner than this. However between Christmas, a string of birthdays, and then Easter it’s kind of been dessert overload over here for the past few months. Only now that most of the dessert baking occasions have passed did I really feel inspired to give these cookies another go.
If you remember from the original Test the Recipe post, following that recipe the cookies came out fine, but weren’t really very pineapple-y and the glaze was kind of a disaster. So my mission was to bring more pineapple to the cookies while also improving the glaze. Luckily this was kind of a two birds with one stone type situation. So, what changes did I make?
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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