If you go to a big supermarket, you’ll see two basic kinds of peanut butter: creamy and crunchy. If you’re lucky, you might also see a honey roasted flavor in the mix. But peanuts go with so many flavors that it actually seems a bit odd that there aren’t more flavored peanut butter options out there. Fortunately, however, a company called P.B. Loco makes more than enough to go around, and offers up peanut butter paired with all kinds of things, from Asian Curry Spice to Raspberry White Chocolate.

Their Peanut Butter with Jungle Banana is one flavor in particular that is creative and tasty. Peanut butter on bananas was one of my favorite after-school snacks as a kid and it didn’t seem in the least bit strange to get those two flavors together in one spoonful straight out the jar. The peanut butter is smooth and creamy, with strong flavors of both peanuts and bananas, and a nice toasted-nut flavor to the finish. It is excellent on bananas and would make a fantastic fluffernutter sandwich with marshmallow cream. This flavor also reminds me strongly of Elvis, since he will always be remembered as being a huge fan of fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

Over the past few years, cupcakes have found a solid niche in the world of weddings. The fact that they’re easy to serve and cute makes them a great choice, even though you loose a little of the traditional look of a cake. Wedding cakes are the biggest project that a baker can take on. They’re not necessarily as difficult to make as some of the more advanced pastry doughs out there, but they are very time-intensive because of their size and do require that you pay more attention to structure than with a regular cake due to the weight of the layers. This Multi-Tier Mini Cake Pan creates a hybrid between a wedding cake and a wedding cupcake because it produces cupcake-sized three-tier wedding cakes! The cakes don’t have separate layers, but come out as one ready-to-decorate piece. They are 4-inches in diameter and 4-inches high at their peak.

This nonstick pan only bakes four cakes at a time, so it’s not entirely ideal for catering a really large wedding, but it wouldn’t be too difficult to make a few batches for a smaller group or for an anniversary. And, of course, the little cakes could be decorated to look like non-wedding cakes for everyday occasions when you want to put the pan to use, as well.

Bread baking is perceived as being a very time-consuming and tricky process, with yeast, flour, proofing and shaping to contend with. This is why the concept of low-maintenance “no-knead” bread is so appealing. I tend to think that bread making only seems time consuming because of the long rises, not the few minutes of kneading dough, but I’m always up for a recipe that is easy and produces a great-tasting result and “no-knead” bread fits that bill perfectly.

To make no-knead bread, you basically only need to mix up the dough, give it a long, slow rise, and bake it without any kneading or shaping necessary. The long slow rise allows both gluten and flavor to develop, so that you end up with a bread that tastes good and also rises up well. The dough can be wetter than a dough that needs to be handled, which means that you’re also able to get a loaf that has a thick, crunchy crust and a moist, chewy interior. No-knead breads are usually baked in some sort of lidded pot or dutch oven (and are sometimes called “Pot Bread” as a result). This enclosed space helps the crust to develop and shapes the bread so you don’t have to.

This loaf is based on a Nancy Baggett recipe and is definitely as easy as promised. It had a great flavor, with a nice butteriness and a very subtle tang from the long first rise. It also had a wonderfully chewy interior and an excellent crust. My bread rose well and had a nice, open texture. You can substitute bread flour for the all purpose in this recipe, but you will still get very good results with the all purpose (all purpose is what I buy in bulk - and what most people keep in their kitchens - so it is definitely a little more convenient).

The shape of your bread will vary slightly depending on the size pot you use to bake it in. I used my Dutch oven, but if you don’t have a suitable pot already, you might want to check out Nancy’s advice on picking a good one for bread baking.

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• Vin Santo is an Italian dessert wine made from grapes that are dried, pressed, fermented and aged into a very sweet and distinctive spirit. Noble Pig’s Grape and Vin Santo Cakes is a great way to showcase its unique flavor, as the sweet and buttery cakes include whole grapes, in addition to a generous amount of Vin Santo, that play up the grapey flavors in the wine. The cakes are baked in a jumbo muffin pan, but if you don’t have one, you should be able to make slightly smaller versions by adjusting the baking time a bit.
• Anzac Day is April 25th and in keeping with tradition, Tartelette posted about Anzac biscuits - or actually, a variation on them: an Anzac Tart. The tart has lots of the featured ingredients from standard Anzac biscuits - oats, golden syrup and coconut - in the form of a sticky oatmeal tart topped with a layer of coconut bavarian and a streusel made out of the traditional cookie dough. It’s impressive, and while it won’t ship as well as the usual biscuits, it would definitely perk up anyone sitting down to eat it.
• Jamie Oliver’s Ultimate Gingerbread, posted by Cherrapeno, is more similar to shortbread than to the cake-like gingerbread that is a bit more common over in the US. In fact, it actually uses store bought shortbread in the recipe, ground up into crumb form! The shortbread is mixed with ground ginger, crystallized ginger, treacle and golden syrup, and comes out to be sweet, spicy, soft and crunchy all at the same time.
• A cherry float is similar to a root beer float, but is made with cherry coke and ice cream for a fruitier flavor. The Cherry Float Cupcakes that Coco Bean made this week use regular coke and maraschino cherry syrup to create the same general flavor in a cupcake. The cakes also include some cocoa powder, to bring out the cocoa notes in the soda, and is topped off with a cola-tinged icing and a maraschino cherry.
• If you’re getting a little tired of the same old chocolate and vanilla cakes, you might want to do what Slow Like Honey did and try Alice Medrich’s Toasted Sesame Cake. Generously studded with black sesame seeds, the cake has an unusual look and an unusual flavor due to the generous amount of toasted sesame oil in the batter. It doesn’t need frosting, but a simple scoop of vanilla ice cream pairs well with this.

The principle behind iced tea is simple: make hot tea and serve it cold. Unfortunately, getting a good batch of iced tea is not always as easy as it sounds. It’s easy to over-steep the tea, making it bitter, and it is equally easy to over dilute it with ice, leaving you with a less-than-refreshing drink. I find that the best way to make iced tea is to brew extra strong tea by using a few extra tea bags (depending on the size of the batch), stir in a generous amount of sugar or honey while the tea is hot, then chill it overnight without adding any ice. Ice should be added to the glasses just before serving.

My current favorite way to serve iced tea is to use frozen fruit in place of ice cubes. The frozen fruit keeps the drink cold while they are defrosting, and they don’t add excess water - unlike ice cubes - that dilutes the tea. In fact, they add a little bit of fruity sweetness to the tea, so each glass will be even more flavorful than it would be with ice alone. Frozen fruit will be good in any type of tea, but it’s even better if you brew a fruity tea to begin with. The tea pictured above is Zhena’s Gypsy Tea Strawberry Kiwi Green Tea (review here), which I iced with frozen strawberries, raspberries and cherries, then garnished with a sprig of mint.

I like to make lists, whether they’re grocery lists, lists of recipes that I want to work on or lists of friends I haven’t delivered baked goods to in a while. It is always over the first cup of coffee in the morning that things start to come into focus and I tend to write on what’s available at the moment; just like remembering a dream, if you don’t write it down when you first think of it, you’ll probably forget completely.

Writing on post-its, pieces of newspaper and the backs of envelopes isn’t such a bad strategy for grocery lists, but it’s not great for anything else because it is just too easy to loose that little paper before I get around to checking things off. This is precisely why this Write-On Mug caught my eye. The mug is designed so that you can write right on the surface with a pencil (with eraser, included). It couldn’t be more perfect for making lists over that first cup of coffee - and if you’re anything like me, you know that it’s a lot easier to misplace a piece of paper than it is to loose track of a mug of freshly brewed coffee. Pencil is the perfect medium for this mug because it comes off easily and you can write on the mug while it is upright and filled up. You can reuse it again and again, too. The Glassware comes in two options - a mug and a tumbler - so you can pick the style that suits your drinking habits and get the tumbler if you prefer to start your day with juice instead of coffee.