French Toast

Every time there is a winter storm coming, the residents of St. Louis make french toast. Nobody talks about it, in fact I suspect that I am revealing a secret right now and may be unwittingly putting our lives here at risk. I am, however, willing to risk harm to get the truth out. So how did I, an outsider, come to possess this knowledge if nobody speaks of it?

It's simple: Deductive reasoning. Every time the weather people predict a storm, everyone heads out and purchases copious amounts of bread, milk and eggs. And what do you make with these three ingredients? FRENCH TOAST!

But wait, you may say, maybe they are buying other items to eat with their milk, bread, and eggs. Nope! Peanut butter and jelly are left on the shelves, flour and sugar can be found in every store and soup? Well, you'll find cans of all varieties hopefully waiting to be taken home. Alas, the soup waits in vain. We were in Wal-Mart earlier today and there was not one carton of eggs left on the shelf and bread was wiped out. There was plenty of soup, though!

Now that I posses this knowledge, what am I going to do? I would think it'd be obvious. I'm going to stockpile maple syrup and sell it to my neighbors at excessively high prices every time it snows!

Peanut Butter Frosting

I was informed today that I need to post more often... It's true. I've even made a goal to write more often. So what have I been up to? Well, today I made cupcakes from honey pound cake with peanut butter frosting. I wasn't horribly impressed with the cake- it didn't taste enough of honey and it needs something more- but the frosting was pretty tasty.

Since I followed the advise of commenters on a recipe, I need to write down the recipe as I made it and I may as well share in the process.

1 stick butter, room temperature
1 1/2 c creamy peanut butter (Skippy worked for me)
1 T Vanilla extract (I used the real stuff)
2 c powdered sugar
1/3 c heavy cream, plus maybe a little more

Cream together butter and peanut butter until you can't see any butter. Add vanilla and mix until it's incorporated.
Add one cup powdered sugar and, while mixing, slowly add about half the cream. Once that's incorporated, add the other cup of sugar and slowly drizzle in the rest of the cream while mixing. If your icing is too thick, or just not as creamy as you'd like, drizzle in a little more cream until you've reached a good consistency.

I didn't add any extra cream to mine and it was a tiny bit thicker than I'd have liked, but I was still able to spread it on my cupcakes without a problem. It was nice and fluffy and tasted like peanut butter deliciousness. I can imagine that it'd be good on brownies, chocolate cupcakes, graham crackers... And other things that are good with peanut butter.

So there's a post for you. I will try to be better about posting in the future. In the mean time, enjoy your frosting!