This has been one crazy week, to say the least! I left New Zealand on Tuesday to return to New York City and I was feeling a range of different emotions. Even though my Mum has made an amazing recovery in the past 7 months, I still worry about her a lot and it was very hard to leave her. For now, we will have to make do with phone calls and video chats. It eases my mind somewhat to know she has a great support system around her. We really made the most of our last few weeks together, including a trip down to Tauranga and Mount Maunganui. The beaches down there are among my favourites, and we took her dog Jessie with us, and she was loving all the bush and beach walks.
peanut butter
Salted Peanut Butter Cookies
If you read my food reviews, you’ll recall a recent post about Ovenly and how sinfully delicious their baked goods are. Especially their salted peanut butter cookies! I was so taken aback with how good these cookies were, that I knew I had to find the recipe and try to recreate them myself. Well I did it! It wasn’t such a hard task, thanks to Ovenly having this recipe in their cookbook. Smitten Kitchen featured the recipe on their website, so I was only a short amount of time away from having these amazing cookies baking in my oven.
For this recipe to be successful, you need to use a processed peanut butter such as Skippy or Jif. The natural peanut butters are too runny so don’t be tempted to make these cookies more healthy. Just enjoy them for what they are: pure peanut butter heaven. To achieve the shape seen in the photos, you will need to use a cookie scoop. Freezing the dough is mandatory if you want to get the pretty striations on top of the cookies.
Treats from Ovenly
One of my co-workers used to live in Greenpoint and I remember her sharing a baked good with me one day, which had berries and tasted incredible. This was my first time trying anything from Ovenly, and I was so impressed I had to try more. I finally went there last weekend around 11am. I spied one last Blueberry Cornflake Muffin. It was mine! I have a thing for good berry muffins. Then, I thought, I can’t come all the way here and just get a muffin. So I also chose a Salted Peanut Butter Cookie and a piece of Espresso Burnt Sugar Shortbread, A.K.A The Stumptown Shorty.
I had heard claims that Ovenly’s Salted Peanut Butter Cookies were the best you could find anywhere. I had even read these claims in online reviews. But I’m not going to lie: when I first saw these cookies in person, I thought they looked too small and how could anything that small be the best? Well that old cliche, ‘good things come in small packages’, definitely applies here!
Cake & Co in Ponsonby
After having lunch in Ponsonby the other day, I was on the hunt for something sweet and came across Cake & Co on Ponsonby Road. Since opening in December last year, Cake & Co has been making a name for themselves by only using fresh, natural ingredients and catering to many dietary restrictions. Here you…
Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookie from Levain Bakery
If you’re a lover of peanut butter then get yourself down to Levain Bakery as soon as you can! Their dark chocolate peanut butter cookie ($4) is to die for; crammed with peanut butter chips and made with extra dark French cocoa. And just look at the size of this cookie. It’s definitely not for…