Herb Crusted Pork Chops, Salad, and Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups - altered Alicia Silverstone Vegan Recipe

Breaded porkchops. Ingredients: Bread crumbs, chopped fresh parsley, parmesan cheese. Oh-so-yummy salad with homemade pomegranate vinegrette dressing.

Emily demonstrating her rocker-chopping skills. If you'd like to see this in action, check this video: http://youtu.be/wdt2Mbq7rfk

Last night dinner was yummy but the highlight was the dessert. We made homemade peanut butter cups based on a recipe found in the Parade newspaper magazine a while back. Alicia Silverstone is a vegan but we are not; however, her recipe sounded so yummy we had to try. We simply substituted what we had for the special ingredients she listed. The original recipe follows and indicated also is what we used. The result was fabulous. Everyone wanted a to-go package of the cups.

Here's Emily adding the peanut butter to the melted butter. She's getting very good at 'eye-balling' some measurements. Who wants to clean peanut butter out of a measuring cup anyway? See the red pan in the background? That's the chocolate mixture melting. We're multi-tasking (of course!).

Adding the chocolate topping to the cups.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups - Alicia Silverstone
Ingredients:

1/2 cup Earth Balance butter spread (1 stick real butter!)

3/4 cup crunchy peanut butter; preferably unsweetened and unsalted (3/4 cup regular super crunchy peanut butter

3/4 cup graham crackers crumbs

1/4 cup maple sugar (brown sugar)

1 cup grain-sweetened, non-dairy chocolate or carob chips (1 cup mini chocolate chips)

1/4 cup soy, rice, or nut mile (1/4 whole milk)

1/4 cup chopped peanuts

Directions:

1. add paper liners to a 12 cup muffin pan.

2. melt the butter over low heat.

3. stir in peanut butter, sugar, and graham cracker crumbs.

4. remove the mixture from heat (don't need to cook it, just melt it).

5. fill the paper cups (a little over 1 tablespoon per cup).

6. combine chocolate and milk and melt over low heat; heat until smooth (we had this going at the same time as step 1 to speed this along).

7. spoon and spread the chocolate over the peanut butter mixture.

8. top with chopped nuts.

9. refrigerate until set; for at least 2 hours (ours never made it to the 2 hour mark.