uh... care to share this peanut butter sauce? I am intrigued.
Hell, how about every part of the recipe. I'm always looking for better, non-wheat based approaches to typical wheat-based dishes. And I love chocolate. And peanut butter.
Bananas I'm "ehh" on, and the whole combination I might not actually like that much. Could be a great carb-load meal if I plan to push a run the next day, and a healthier and more well-rounded approach to a carb-heavy style brinner compared to most similar meals. 🙂
I've been experimenting a lot of different flours, because I am allergic to gluten (as well as dairy & corn). So I've had to learn how to make a lot more stuff from scratch, like powdered sugar...most powdered sugar is made from sugar and cornstarch, but I learned that you can make your own simply by putting regular sugar in a blender! Also I don't think sugar is that bad in moderation. Some people act like it's the end of the world, but you're going to die anyway, so live a little
😉
Lately I've been using Gluten-Free Bisquick for new recipes, which my local grocery store started stocking next to the regular Bisquick. It's easier to experiment with because it's a lot cheaper than buying bags of individual flours (some alternative flours are $6+ for a small bag, vs. $4.59 a box of GF Bisquick, so if you're trying something new it can get mega-expensive if it comes out bad, vs. pretty consistent results with boxed Bisquick). GF Bisquick ingredients are: rice flour, sugar, leavening (baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate), modified potato starch, salt, xanthan gum. Another advantage is that it works well for pancakes out of the box without having to tinker with different (expensive) ingredients.
The peanut butter sauce recipe is pretty simple: creamy natural peanut butter, powdered sugar, vanilla extract, water. I just throw it all in the blender and mix it until I get the consistency & flavor I want. You can do it more like a butter or spread like I did on the pancakes, or more creamy like a caramel sauce like I did on the brownies. It's especially awesome if you put some shelled walnuts on top! I brought some of those brownies into work the other day and they disappeared pretty quick (recipe: 1/4 cup Sunsweet Lighter Bake, 1/2 cup cocoa, 1 cup sugar, 2 eggs, 1 tsp vanilla, 1/2 cup GF Bisquick, 1/4 tsp salt, and then a little extra water or soymilk for consistency - bake @ 350F for 23 minutes).
This month I'm messing around a lot with cocoa, just because I like chocolate and haven't really used cocoa with much success before. You do need some type of sugar to balance it out, otherwise it's kind of bitter and not really very good. When I make GF Bisquick pancakes (1 cup Bisquick, 1 cup vanilla soymilk, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 egg - mix in blender & then cook) I usually just throw in half a banana to make it fluffier & creamier, which is what I did with my cocoa pancakes tonight.
You can go hardcore and use the raw flours if you'd like. I recently tried almond flour pancakes at a Paleo restaurant (sweet potato pancakes made from almond flour) and they were pretty tasty, although heavy going down. However a 16-ounce bag of almond flour is like $12, which is why I like using the Bisquick stuff when experimenting haha. And there are plenty of alternative flavorings you can use...homemade fruit sauce, agave nectar, wildflower honey, etc. I'm pretty hypoglycemic, so I try to keep my sugar intake to evening meals when I won't crash hard, or otherwise use slower sugars like honey instead of raw sugar or powdered sugar.
