Stutley Tales

Last week I found a recipe that only had 4 ingredients, and they were all in my pantry. Peanut butter, honey, milk powder and almond flakes. Melt the honey and peanut butter together, add the ground almonds and milk powder and mix with the paddle blade of an electric mixer.

My mixer doesn’t have a paddle blade, so I just used the regular beaters. That didn’t work very well, and the whole bowl of mixture resembled dry bread crumbs that shot out all over me and the counter. So I swapped the beaters for dough hooks. That worked slightly better, but it still wouldn’t clump together. So I dropped the dough hooks into the sink and started kneading the mixture in the bowl. That didn’t seem to work either. I made a couple of small balls in my fist and thought that maybe I could make a whole batch of small balls rather than knead it and roll it out like the recipe said.

Using a small ice-cream scoop, I dropped little balls on a sheet of paper, but the mixture was becoming drier by the minute. By the time I was half way through the mixture, I could see that it was becoming too dry to stay clumped together, so I started using my hands again. That seemed to work for a while as the heat from my hands warmed the mixture. But that soon didn’t work either. I stood there looking at the mixture left in the bowl and the round balls drying on the paper, and decided to cut my losses. I tossed the rest of the mixture out. I couldn’t resist the urge to sample one of the balls. It was a bit chewy, but tasted yummy. I bundled up the other balls and popped them into an airtight container and into the fridge.

Next day I was afraid I would break a tooth trying to bite into one. There wasn’t even a tooth mark on the ball! How was I going to eat this? Maybe I needed to leave it out. Hours later I came back, but it was still hard. Maybe if I hit it with the meat mallet it would break into smaller bits. Afraid of breaking the plate, I placed the cookie directly on the bench… Nope… After the first hit, the dog took off in fright. Three hits later, there was chips of biscuit on the bench, and my little ball sat staring up at me with little dents, but no sign of a break. I hit it again (very hard) and it broke in half. I tentatively bit down on one half, to the amusement of my growing band of spectators. (Funny that… the dog and cat were hiding, and everyone else in the house had come to see what I was doing.) It still didn’t leave a tooth mark. I picked up the mallet again and smashed each half into crumbs. By now my bench and floor are covered in little bits of cookie.

Peering into the container of peanut butter balls, my brother-in-law helpfully suggested that they could be used in a sling shot – I won’t tell you the other suggestions! I wondered about reheating the cookie in the microwave. Would that soften it? 10 seconds… still hard as a rock. 20 seconds… still hard.  30 seconds… now we are getting somewhere! My sister-in-law hit on the perfect time – 33 seconds left them pliable and a little gooy on the inside.

Sometimes things don’t work out how you think they will – that’s life. Go with the flow… Roll with the punches… Look for solutions… Melt the cookies.

I don’t think I’ll try this recipe again. Or will I…?

DJ

(c) DJ Stutley 2012

Read Full Post »