MORE CHOCOLATE.

all work and no treats makes every day the worst day.
all treats and no work makes every day the poorest day.
all work and all treats makes every day my kind of day.
that's right, guys.
i want all of it, all the time.
i'm not scared to get my hands dirty, or the dishes dirty,
or the strong language dirty, or the thoughts dirty......
i'm a working person, and i put in work, and work with purpose,
and while i was working on making some treats the other day,
i couldn't help but come back to one notion, time and again:
......this needs MORE chocolate.
mmmhmmm.
that's the thought that recurred,
over and over and over again,
as i added in ingredients to a big bowl of potential.
uh-huh.
if one chocolate is good, then two is better;
and if two is a lot,
then five sounds more along the lines of what i'm aiming for.
real talk,
too much is the right amount,
and if i start out on a peanut butter cookie trajectory,
there's no telling what we'll have by the time they're in your mouth.
wait.
peanut butter?
i thought we were speaking on chocolate?
dudes!
THAT'S what i'm sayin'.
i wanted peanut buttery flat fatties,
but i ventured deep behind the borders of simple and straightforward,
and emerged on the other side with five times the chocolate.
yikes.
take a look, and then i'll tell you a little bit more about it:

CHOCOLATE and PEANUT BUTTER are BEST FRIENDS!
stands to reason that if i'm making treats to share with MY best friend,
i'd wanna make something representative.
word up.
but, seriously,
there is five times the chocolate,
and also twice the peanut butter,
than your average everyday cookie.
you want some of this?
at your house, i mean?
ok.
it goes a little something like this:
-
preheat that ovenpiece to 375F.
in a medium bowl, cream together:
1 cup sugar;
1 stick vegan butter;
dash of salt;
2 tsp vanilla...
when that's all become one greasy sweet thing,
stir in 3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce;
3/4 cup peanut butter;
1/3 cup cocoa...
^big black blarpity blops are what you'll have on hand at this stage.
don't stop now.
add in:
2 cups a.p. flour;
1/3 cup oat flour;
1/4 cup ground unsweetened coconut;
1 tsp bakey soda;
1 1/2 tsp bakey kapowder;
1-1 1/2 cups dark chocolate chips.
^neighbors,
this is the big action.
mix it with a spatula until it's all joining forces,
and finish it off with your hands.
i got two and a half dozen golfball-sized rich and thick
burly brown bombers form this batch, which i flattened down prior to baking,
without the fork lines associated with pb cookies in the regular world.
13 minutes of baking,
30+ minutes of cooling on a rack,
and then,
we got to work on some molto molto activation,
because a sexy cookie is good,
but a total overkill cookie is vastly superior.
mmmmmmm.
chocolate peanut butter frosting?
yuuuup!!
piped out in that ziggly-zaggle on one side!
that's 4 T butters, 2 cups of powdered sugar, 3 T peanut butter,
a teaspoon of vanilla, and shot after shot of soymilk,
like, maybe 3 T? to emulsify it all as it whisks up
and expands into the aerated excellence we expect .
man.
that's dope.
but,
there's also chocolate ganache dipped down on the other other side.
ummm,
it's mandatory to take it to the far flung reaches of decadence and overindulgence.
i'm just sayin',
i wouldn't want to quit in sight of the finish line, y'feel me?
that's also why i added one more chocolate to the fracas.
i did.
microplaned chocolate truffle sprankles.
...and that's expert.
i wasn't kidding.
i kept thinking: more chocolate.
and then, i kept adding more chocolate.
the treats practically design themselves, duders.
and on the ones,
they went down soooo smoothly.
honestly,
nobody could stop themselves from tuning up a few,
and then sneaking back for just one more.
that's the sort of thing that sure feels like a compliment,
even if everybody has a mouth too full to say so.
***********
we're about to go back to being a pair of bachelor battle beasts.
huh?
oh.
i mean crabtree and me.
yeah.
cucch is outta here.
off to experience the broader horizons and brighter futures of wyoming.
we all wish him nothing but overwhelming success,
and a prosperous and happy next step-
with increases in love, and family, and wealth,
all looming ahead on a straightaway path to being awesome.
yep.
i'll miss him.
i always do.
i'm glad we had this time together,.
and i'm always grateful for his friendship.
there aren't many worth-a-sh!t people out there,
but he's at the top of that very short list.
whatever comes after this,
i hope for nothing but the very best for him and his;
never quiet, never soft.....