Adventures with peanut butter

I have been having some interesting and tasty encounters with peanut butter lately. I made Tim chocolate/ peanut butter brownies for Valentine's Day. I used just a basic brownie recipe, but added peanut butter to the melted chocolate and mixed in peanut butter chips. I cooked them in a muffin pan for easy serving sizes. Once they were baked, I used a couple to make chocolate peanut butter trifles. These were decadent!

I had been reading in a magazine about making trifles, and I thought I'd try it. They are all about different colors and textures, and the layers should be interesting to look at. I made them in juice glasses so I could see the layers.

So here is my trifle, starting from the bottom:

1. crumbled brownies

2. chocolate pudding

3. peanut butter (melted in the microwave for 30 seconds, so it spreads nicely)

4. mini marshmallows

5. chocolate pudding

6. more brownies

Then I made peanut butter cup cheesecakes. I have been looking at the mini cheesecake crusts at the grocery store and wishing I had a reason to use them. A coworker's birthday was an excellent excuse!

I started out with my basic no-bake cheesecake recipe:

1 can sweetened condensed milk

8 oz cream cheese (room temp.)

1/3 C lemon juice

1 tsp vanilla

Mix until well blended. (It fit in exactly 12 of these little crusts.)

Then I melted some baking chocolate and spread it on the bottom and sides of the little crusts. When the chocolate had set, I melted some peanut butter and mixed it with some of the cheesecake mixture and spread it in the pans. It is topped with chocolate chips and chocolate syrup. The white ones are s'mores: chocolate chips on the bottom and cheesecake topped with marshmallows and chocolate sauce.