Hot Fudge! Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Hot Fudge

You know what goes great with every scoop of ice cream?  A huge dollop of homemade hot fudge.  I like to think of myself as a pro when it comes to ice cream.  I know ice cream is awesome by itself but when paired with toppings of all kind it just gets better.  So tonight I'm going to have me a nice big bowl of ice cream with dark chocolate peanut butter hot fudge, oh yeah you betta believe it peanut butter hot fudge.  This will for sure help ease the pain of tomorrow, cause I'm already prepared for a hell of a day at work, the life of an AF paralegal is diffidently not a boring job.  

Now hot fudge is pretty spectacular, but when I decided to raid my pantry and found reeses peanut butter chips and incorporate them into the mix it totally blew my mind. Who doesn't like chocolate and peanut butter together, they wear meant to be.  This fudge recipe is a keeper in our fridge, I try to come up with ideas to use this sauce on anything and everything...cookies done, fruit dip yes! mixed into coffee sure why not. 

 By the way I wont judge if you want to eat this hot fudge by the spoonful cause secretly if there is no ice cream around who's to say you can't eat this straight from the jar..I do :)

Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Hot Fudge
Adapted from Averie Cooks

Yields about 16 ounces

Ingredients

2/3 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened dark cocoa powder (I used Hersey's special Dark)
pinch of salt
4 ounces bittersweet dark chocolate
1/3 cup reeses peanut butter chips
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions

1. Using a medium heavy sauce pan over medium heat bring together the cream, corn syrup, brown sugar, cocoa powder and half of the dark chocolate to a boil, stirring with a wooden spoon until the chocolate is melted and all the ingredients are combined, Reduce the heat and continue cooking at a low boil for 5 minutes, keep stirring with your wooden spoon to avoid burning the chocolate.

2. Remove from heat and add the butter and the rest of the dark chocolate, peanut butter chips, vanilla and salt. Stir until smooth. Let cool for a couple of minutes and drizzle over ice cream.

3.  This keeps very well in the fridge with a tight fitting lid for a few weeks, but will harden, just stick in the microwave for 20 second intervals until melted again. Warning, super addicting and easy to eat by the spoonful.

Crumb Coffee Cake

Its good to be home and back in my kitchen ~ But I think I'm going to need another vacation from my recent vacation.

When we set out for our trip 3 weeks ago to the states to visit family I had not fully prepared myself with the amount of traveling we decided to cram into 3 weeks.  I'm still in disbelief on how many miles we drove, walked and even rowed.  We easily covered over 1500 miles, traveling to 4 different states and another country (Canada).

The best highlights of the trip were starting off in New York City for 2 nights where we walked  10 miles of Manhattan to eat at the "first" pizza place Lombardi's, checked out the Empire State Building, visited the Space Shuttle Enterprise at the Intrepid Museum, by the way free for active duty :) and hitched a ferry ride to Staten Island to catch a glimpse of the statue of Liberty.  After leaving NYC we picked up our car in Syracuse and headed south to Pennsylvania to Hersey Park and went to a Dave Matthews Concert (totally awesome!), then headed up towards Scranton to visit my brother in-law, his gf and our niece for the first time.  (This was the first 5 days)

The best bagel cream cheese in Lox in all of NY

Intrepid Museum 

Biggest Ladder Back Chair in the world

Dave Matthews 

After our time in PA we drove to Vermont to visit family, play some disc golf and had fish in chips in 

Massachusetts with Grandma.  Took a detour to Lake George and camped out for 3 nights on a island in the middle of the lake, did a little kayaking, cliff jumping (small cliff), tubing, watched an amazing electric storm on the lake..oh and was savagely attacked by mosquitos.  We kept traveling north for  a reunion in Plattsburg NY later that evening went even further north to Montreal Canada where we stayed in the historic part of downtown in a cute little hotel watching fireworks from the bridge, walking the entire city checking out local shops and restaurants and trying putine for the first time, which by the way is fries smothered in gravy and topped with cheese curds...delicious!! (All this in week 2)

Putine

Cliff Jumping Lake George 

Birds eye view of Montreal 

After our stay in Canada we left to meet up with my father in-law at his camp in the Andirondacks where we stayed a couple of nights, went canoeing, boating and thrift shopping. the last leg of our journey we headed back to Syracuse to catch up on sleep, laundry and more sleep before leaving to go back to Japan.

 All in all it was a very successfully trip, we saw a lot of family that we haven't seen an a couple of years, our rental car never gave us issues and for the most part we didn't get lost when driving all over the northeastern side of the country.

Now to the food, I made this coffee cake before I left on vacation, some co-workers were craving it, this recipe came out amazing, very light, sweet and the huge brown sugar crumbles are delicious, they were my favorite part.  Place this cake soaks up coffee like a sponge.

Crumb Coffee Cake

Adapted from Sally's baking addiction

1 Tablespoon Flour, to coat the pan
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
10 tablespoons cold butter, lightly softened in the microwave for 20 seconds
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, spray a 9 inch springform pan with cooking spray and sprinkle the bottom of the pan with flour, tapping out excess flour.

2. Whisk the flour, sugar, salt together in a large bowl until combined.  Cut the butter into 1 tablespoon sized pieces and using your hands or a fork mix/mash together the butter and dry ingredients until it resembles a crumbly mixture. scoop out 1 cup of the mixture and set it aside.

3. Transfer the rest of the ingredients from the large mixing bowl into an electric mixer (the batter is going to be very thick and the mixer helps a lot) Add in the baking soda and powder and mix together for 1 minute. Add in the buttermilk, egg, vanilla and mix everything together on medium high speed for about 2 minutes until smooth and fluffy, the batter will look kinda of like frosting, pour the batter into the springform pan and using a spatula smooth the top of the batter until even in the pan.

4. Using your empty large mixing bowl add in the reserved 1 cup of flour mixture and add in the brown sugar and cinnamon, using a fork or your hands crumble up the ingredients together making course crumbs. Sprinkle the crumbs over the batter, pressing lightly so the crumbs stick to the batter.

5.  Bake for 50-55 minutes (mine took 50) or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, allow to cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes, remove the side of the springform pan and cool completely to room temp.