strawberry streusel cake

You want to know what the saddest thing in the world is?

Of course you do. Everyone wants a bit of misery on a Saturday morning.

The saddest thing in the world is when you make a cake, and it's a really, really good cake (no, bear with me). And you're eating this cake, and you're thinking, 'this wasn't really the cake I had in mind', but it's nothing against the cake itself, you just sort of hoped it would be different. And you do like this cake, you really do, but you spend every mouthful thinking of the cake it could have been, and before you know it all the cake is gone, and you never really appreciated it, cause you were always thinking of something else.

Oh, yeah- I mean, sure you could apply that story to like, relationships, and life and so on. But I'm pretty much just talking about cake.

I really like cake.

So I made another one. A better one. The one I'd wanted all along.

Alright, so as delicious as Joy's strawberry streusel cake was, it wasn't the one I had in the back of my mind: you know, the one with great crumb boulders tumbled over the top, and a ribbon of strawberry filling baked through a thick, moist yellow cake. My streusel kind of got engulfed by the rising cake itself, dragged beneath the surface Atlantis-style, and my strawberries turned to chunks; and no one complained, but any excuse for another delicious attempt, you know?

Not to mention that we have so much fresh fruit in our house at the moment that I'm constantly engaged in a dramatic race-against-time to eat it before it turns to goo; as soon as I finish this post I'm going to go battle the forces of decomposition in aid of a few punnets of blueberries and some brown bananas. As soon as I bake something into safety, my mother buys armfuls more - the constant pressure! The constant lining of baking tins! I think my mum is doing this on purpose.

This really is a post full of woe, isn't it? Oh, the trouble I endure.

Strawberry Streusel Cake

Happy Love Strawberry

I turned to about a hundred different sources for this, using Joy's cake as inspiration but turning away from her recipe. This is what I had in mind: heaps of streusel topping steals the show, undercut by a generous swathe of sweet strawberry filling. You may need to bake it for a little longer; I needed to cover it with foil and give it another 15 minutes, but I later realised this was because the Aga was running cool - so use your own judgement.

Preheat oven to 180°C with rack in middle. Generously butter a 9" cake tin. Line bottom with parchment paper.

For the crumbs:
40g (1/3 c.) dark brown sugar
60g (1/3 c.) caster sugar
zest of 1/2 a lemon
1/4 tsp salt
120g (1 stick) butter, melted
250g (1 3/4 c.) plain flour

To make crumbs: in a large bowl, whisk sugars, lemon zest and salt into melted butter until smooth. Then, add flour with a spatula or wooden spoon. It will look and feel like a solid dough. Leave it pressed together in the bottom of the bowl and set aside.

Strawberry filling:
about 150g (1 heaping c.) sliced strawberries
60g (1/3 c.) sugar
2 tbsp cornflour (cornstarch)
2 tsp water

Combine strawberries, sugar, water and cornflour in a small saucepan. Cook over low heat for 5 to 7 minutes, stirring constantly until the sauce is thickened and strawberries are soft and somewhat broken down. Set aside to cool.

For the cake:
1 tsp vanilla extract
175g (1 c.) sugar
280g (2 c.) plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
120g (1 stick) butter
2 large eggs
120ml (1/2 c.) sour cream

Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Beat together butter and sugar with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape down side and bottom of bowl. Reduce speed to low and mix in flour mixture and sour cream alternately in batches, beginning and ending with flour, until just combined.

Spread most of batter in pan, then spoon strawberry filling over it. Spoon several small tsps of the remaining batter over the top of the strawberries and smooth them with as gentle of a hand as possible. Using your fingers, break topping mixture into big crumbs. Sprinkle over cake.

Bake until a wooden pick inserted into cake (not into filling) comes out clean, 45-50mins (mine took a little over an hour as the Aga was running cool). Cool in pan 30 minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely, crumb side up.

apricot galette with brown sugar cinnamon pastry.

Hello, world.

Remember me? I used to write inane, cheerful and cake-centric food blog posts. It made me rather happy, and the people were lovely, and my friends got to eat lots of sugar, and really everyone was a winner. Apart from my mother, who funded my flour rations. But it was kind of for the greater good, and ultimately, she got a cake like this for her birthday, so who was complaining?

But then the metaphorical winter came. And, er, also the literal winter. And also I went to uni and couldn't really afford that much butter - or, I could afford that much butter, but I couldn't afford all the fresh vegetables and salad to balance it out and prevent, you know, heart disease.

But recently, the sun has come back, and I came home; the summer produce has invoked the drive to put fruit in pastry (I can't look at a piece of fruit without wanting to put it in a tart case! I keep snatching nectarines out of my sister's hand and shouting things like, 'PIE!', overzealously. I'm not even very good with pastry); I began to get sickeningly enthusiastic over cooking for my family again; and I developed this strange tic where I compulsively add lemon zest or juice to just about everything.

I thought about going to some sort of support group over the lemon thing, but when I sounded this out to a couple of people I was forced to conclude that no such group exists.

So I came back to blogging. Please be gentle.

This galette is the perfect example of my newfound pastry-urges (and hello, it contains the phrase brown sugar cinnamon pastry in its name. Surely you understand). This is a terrible thing to admit, but I don't think I'd eaten a fresh apricot before this - dried apricots, apricot yoghurt, apricot squash; but never the real shebang - but even with my lack of experience, I could tell the ones we had were perfect. I didn't even know when apricots were in season - for the record: right now.

Appearance-wise, this tart was a little less than perfect (one reason I like these freeform galettes; you can say you were going for 'rustic'), but I suspect this is due to my resolutely slicing the apricots rather than just halving them (there wasn't really enough room, but I loved the tumbled effect), not to mention that I just couldn't resist that pastry - brown. sugar. cinnamon. - and there was probably supposed to be a good deal more of it than I, um, ended up with. All the same, the galette I ended up with was not a 'serves 8-10' affair; I'd say closer to six, if you don't want to roll your pastry out uncomfortably thin (and it's better if you don't).

Apricot Galette with Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pastry

The beauty of this is how incredibly simple it all is; the pastry is made in minutes in the food processor and the fruit is just tossed with brown sugar (and - I couldn't help it - lemon zest, because no one's ever told me that lemon *doesn't* go with apricot...). This means you could use just about any fruit - this is crying out to be made with plums, in that late Summer-early Autumn period around August and September. Do it for me.

Adapted from BBC Good Food magazine.
Serves 6-8.

pastry:
150g plain flour
50g wholemeal flour
2tsp cinnamon
140g cold butter, cut into small chunks
85g light muscavado sugar
optional zest of 1/2 a lemon
1 egg, separated

filling:
700g apricots, halved and stoned (I sliced mine)
1 tbsp demerara sugar

1. Oven to 200C. Put the flour & cinnamon in a food processor and add the butter, processing to make fine crumbs. Reserve 2tbsp of the muscavado sugar, then add the remainder and the lemon zest, and briefly mix. Add the egg yolk and 1 tbsp water, then pulse to make a firm dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and briefly knead. Wrap in cling film and chill for 30 mins.

2. Toss apricots in the reserved muscavado sugar. Roll out pastry on a sheet of baking parchment to a roughly 30cm round. Slide pastry & paper onto a large baking sheet. Cover with apricot halves/slices, cut sides up, and fold the edges of the pastry over the fruit, leaving the centre uncovered.

3. Lightly beat egg white and brush over the pastry. Sprinkle with demerara sugar and bake for 30-35 mins until the pastry is crisp and the apricots tender. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Visions Of Sugar Plums

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;

"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

-Extract from The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore

- Very lazy blog post by a weary Ms. Blue

Night-Before-Christmas Slice
Makes 12
Recipe from Super Food Ideas: December 2007 via http://www.taste.com.au/

150g (1 c.) mixed dried fruit (I used raisins, currants, sultanas (I know those three are basically the same thing, but whatever), then finely chopped dried apricots & dates)
200g (half a jar) mincemeat
75g butter, chopped
40g (1/4 cup) brown sugar
1 tsp orange zest
1 tbsp orange juice
60ml (1/4 cup) brandy
1 egg, lightly beaten
70g (1/2 cup) plain flour, sifted
35g (1/8 cup) self-raising flour, sifted
60g pecans
1 tsbp apricot jam

1. Combine dried fruit, mincemeat, butter, sugar, orange rind, juice and 40ml (a couple of tbsp) brandy in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring, for 3 to 5 minutes or until sugar dissolves. Remove to a large bowl. Allow to cool to room temperature.

2. Preheat oven to 150°C. Grease a 8" tin and line with baking paper, allowing a 2cm overhang at both long ends. Add eggs and flours to dried fruit mixture. Stir to combine.

3. Spread mixture over prepared pan. Top with nuts. Bake for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Combine jam and remaining brandy in a heatproof, microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on medium-high (70%) for 30 seconds or until jam melts. Brush cake top with jam, cover, and allow to cool in pan. Cut into pieces to serve.



I know it's not the night before Christmas yet, but I thought I'd give you a bit of time ^__^.

Flipping Marvellous

As you all know, I have dazzlingly healthy eating habits; so when Joy The Baker posted a few weeks ago about making carrot cake pancakes my reaction was nought but glee at the idea of getting those extra vegetables in for breakfast.

Hee hoo hoo hoo. I just like the fact it has 'cake' in the name. CAKE FOR BREAKFAST, MOTHER. I TOLD YOU IT WAS THE FUTURE.


However, after the triumph of my carrot cake a few weeks back, the novelty of beta-carotene is wearing off a little.

Also I just like to be excessive, it makes me feel like a better blogger (not hard).

Also I like grating stuff.

To summarise: two batches of pancakes! (This is the kind of summary I enjoy). The first is Joy's carrot cake pancake recipe: I don't have much to bring to the party over those other than to say firmly, I APPROVE. The second is an apple pancake recipe from a book called 'Chocolate'; this is a little redundant as I left the chocolate out. Sometimes I'm so wild I scare myself.

Carrot Cake Pancakes

Adapted from the Food Network

Via Joy The Baker

Metric by me.

170g (1 1/4 cups) plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Dash nutmeg

1 egg, lightly beaten

50g (1/3 cup) caster sugar

240ml (1 cup) milk

200gish (2 cups) finely grated carrots

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream Cheese Spread

120g (4 ounces) cream cheese

50g (1/4 cup) icing sugar

2 tablespoons milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 dash ground cinnamon

1. In a bowl, combine flour, pecans, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, ginger, and nutmeg. In a separate bowl, combine egg, brown sugar, milk, carrots, and vanilla; mix well.

2. Stir carrot mixture into dry ingredients until moistened. Pour batter by 1/4 cupful onto a greased hot pan. Turn when bubbles form on the top of pancake; flip and cook until golden brown.

3. For topping, blend cream cheese, powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla until smooth. Sprinkle with cinnamon, and serve with pancakes.

I've even included a photo of the pancakes cooking (l: apple, r: carrot), just in case this concept is still blowing you away a little. A cake! in a pan! What a crazy world.

Apple Pancakes

Adapted from Chocolate by Parragon

225g (8oz) plain flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

4 tbsp caster sugar

1 egg

1 tbsp butter, melted

300ml (10 fl oz) milk

1 eating apple

1 tsp cinnamon

(50g chocolate chips - I left these out)

1. Mix flour, baking powder, cinnamon and sugar into a bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the egg and melted butter. Gradually whisk in the milk for a smooth batter. Peel, core and grate the apple and stir it into the batter (along with the chocolate chips if you're using those)

2. As for the carrot pancakes: cook in a hot pan. Flip 'em around the kitchen with reckless abandon and alarm flatmates who should know better and innocent visitors (pay them off with pancakes they'll get over it pretty fast). Good times.

George's Marvellous Carrot Cake

When I'm not taking the view that anything can be improved by adding chocolate chip cookie dough or layers of cheesecake, I'm always looking for the best possible version of a basic recipe. You know what I mean? The sort you try, and you just know it's the best; you just know that this is Exactly What It Should Taste Like. Chocolate chip cookies, for example. I don't even want to go into the amount of people who've searched for that ultimate recipe (and even when I think we've found it - yes I did make the NY Times cookies, and yes, just, yes - I continue to search for one that doesn't take 36 hours and £10 worth of ingredients).

Personally, I'm always on the lookout for carrot cake. I save recipes, I compare recipes, I try recipes; I am consistently underwhelmed by recipes. I tear up recipes and stamp on the pieces. I shout things about carrot cake that I will not repeat. I know, deep in my heart, that carrot cake is just so much better than anything I've tried so far.

And I'd almost given up. I'd almost resigned myself to mediocre carrot cake - I'd half told myself that maybe this was just the way carrot cake was; maybe the idea I had in my head was but a dim and distant dream. I'd told myself off a few times for using phrases like 'dim and distant dream' in relation to cake, and so on.

I had nothing to lose, but some carrots to use up. So I pooled my remaining recipes, taking bits from each, changing a couple of measurements, regulating things, casting unnecessary nuts and extraneous ingredients aside.

Oh, it could have been a disaster. I could have been writing this with tear tracks down my orange-tinged cheeks (too many carrots). It would have been the end, my friends. I would have turned away from vegetable-based cake for life, forced to join the real world - the practical, vanilla sponge world. No longer would I write like an eighteenth century novelist chronicling my cake escapades! No more over-dramatics over unsatisfactory baked goods! No more exclamation marks!I made this cake a few weeks ago and froze it, without trying it. And then I got it out the other day; left it overnight. Frosted it in the morning, and ate it in the afternoon. It looked so ordinary - no secret ingredient or unusual method...

But this cake? Was The One. Understated and ridiculously damp and moist, this was the carrot cake I had seek...ed. seeken sought wanted. What makes this cake different from any other cake, I've no clue (I do suspect it benefited from being left overnight) and much in the manner of George's Marvellous Medicine, I'm not sure I could reproduce it, but this is The Recipe.

Do with it what you will, my friends.

I've Actually Found The Best Carrot Cake Recipe In The World
Adapted from four separate sources, I can't really credit anyone with this (it uses two blogs, a bit of Dorie Greenspan, and an old recipe from Gourmet), so it looks like I get dibs on it. I've never been prouder to own anything in my life. Except maybe my Nikon.

This only makes a 7" (double layer) cake so you can double it and make a 9" one as most of the original recipes did. Obviously, I'm cooking on a smaller scale now.

140g (1 c.) flour
180g (1c.) caster sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 tsp each allspice, nutmeg
2 eggs
1 dash salt
200ml oil (EDIT: This should be 1/2c. in my half quantity recipe, but when I copied it out to have to hand in the kitchen, I halved all quantities except the oil X__X. Solves the mystery of why it was so moist, haha. Rather than use a whole cup (240ml) I suggest you try about 200ml and see how it goes).
2 cups carrots, grated by hand (sorry, I don't know this in grams! Should have a volume of 500ml)

1. Beat sugar and oil. Add carrots. Add eggs, one at a time. Sift together flour, baking powder and soda, cinnamon, and salt. Add all together. Bake in 2 7" greased pans at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes. Frost cake with cream cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting
225g cream cheese
60g butter
250-300g (2 c.) confectioners sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Cream together butter and cream cheese. Beat in sugar and vanilla. Frost cake when cooled.

Life Is A Bowl Of Cherries

I imagine that as around 80% of you read this, you are basking in glorious heat. Perhaps you are steaming from the red-hot lasers of the sun's rays. Perhaps you are too weak to lift your eyelids, and are instead resting your sweaty forehead against your computer screens in exhaustion, attempting to comprehend what I'm blathering on about now. Perhaps you are flailing in agony as your blood boils in your very veins.

Yeah? Well, screw you. I'm bloody freezing, and my skylight has started to leak. Welcome to the UK.

It may be monsoon season here, but it's not all bad news. For starters; we're awash (boom boom) with fresh fruit. Strawberries, raspberries, cherries... which apparently aren't berries, despite deceptive rhyming. I genuinely didn't know that, although I suppose the lack of 'berry' at the end of the name should have given it away.

Something else I didn't know about cherries: they apparently reduce your chances of developing diabetes!

The amount of sugar I live on probably significantly increases my chance of developing diabetes. Thus, I have found the perfect solution:

Cherry cheesecake!

No, listen. I have a scientific basis for this, and everything. The cherries, right, counter-act the sugar in the cheesecake. Therefore, you have a completely neutral chance of developing health problems as a result of overindulgence. And by the same logic, surely, the cherries counteract any calories or fat in the cheesecake? You could eat this entire cheesecake, yes, and have effectively consumed nothing at all. Therefore it follows that you absolutely should eat as much cherry cheesecake as possible (within the limits of your stomach exploding, which my cherry vs. sugar hypothesis doesn't cover). **

I've sort of lost my scientific link now, haven't I?

**Disclaimer: Indigo has pulled this out of her arse as an excuse to singlehandedly demolish a cheesecake intended to feed eight people, and takes no responsibility for cavities/diabetes/obesity/stomach-explosion that may occur as a result of you taking her scientific argument too literally. Not that any of those things will occur. Provided you eat enough cherries.

'Ent science a beautiful thing?

There's only one thing better than science. And that's cheesecake.

Cherry Cheesecake Slice
Recipe from BBC Good Food
Follow the link!

A couple of things. 1) Use good quality shortbread biscuits, not rubbishy ones (I have done it both ways, and it makes a difference. The photos are the cheap biscuits - what, I'm a cheap person - but with the nice ones you get a lovely crumbly buttery cheesecake base, so much better than regular digestives.) and 2)Don't put in the oven and then go off to watch telly and completely forget about it - I saved it more-or-less in time, but it wasn't as good as the first time I made it.

Still good though. Still sugar-neutal, this-isn't-going-kill-you, Indy-should-quit-science amounts of Good. Ohh yes.

The Right Road

Yep. It's one of my infamous health foods again.

I have really good excuses justification for this one, though! This one has actual fruit in! In a dried, sweetened sort of way. Hear me out.

So, the original recipe looked more like this. Yes, these were originally Rocky Road Bars - I'm not exactly sure what they are now. A road somewhere else, presumeably. I cut out the cocoa powder (upping the flour to make up), added white chocolate instead coughcough, changed and reduced the sugar, added dessicated coconut (which I'm certain is healthy, but can't back up with any factual knowledge or anything. Now I've left school, everyone knows I don't have knowledge anymore), and swapped all the sugar-high toppings for... sugar-high fruit toppings.

So, those are my excuses for eating these. My excuses for making them?

...I don't actually have any. Yeah, it's true; I've run out of excuses to bake. My friends are all busy revising and working and so on, and I mostly sit at home procrastinating, singing the soundtrack to Wicked: The Musical and occasionally recreating a Native American sun dance (something I came across in my US History notes. Wait til I get to Russian History; who knows what that has in store?). When your days are filled with this sort of thing, it's hard to find someone who wants to hang out with you. Can I get an 'aww'?

Anyone? Fine then.

I've been reduced to actually baking for my family, who (sorry) usually don't deserve it. Firstly there was the Daring Baker challe-- only kidding, DBers! Put your hitmen back in their drawer! I'm not going to give that away yet. But needless to say my family are pretty shocked. It's maybe because of this that these bars have been such a hit - they keep eating more to check they're really there.

Me? Er, same.

Tropical Road Bars
Makes 16

115g butter
100g caster sugar
1 large egg
70g plain flour
1/4 tsp salt
120ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp dessicated coconut
100g white chocolate, melted

For topping:
40g dessicated coconut
80g milk chocolate chips (Okay, I didn't have a full bag for some reason)
200g dried apricots
100g dried sweetened pineapple

Preheat oven to 180C. Line an 8-inch square pan.

1. In a medium saucepan, melt butter and white chocolate, then remove from heat and stir in sugar, egg, flour, salt, milk, coconut and vanilla extract until well-blended.Pour mixture into prepared pan and bake for 20 minutes.

2. Remove pan from oven and top with coconut, chocolate chips, apricots and pineapple, pressing them down with a spatula. Return to oven and bake for 5-7 additional minutes (I upped the temperature a bit, to toast the coconut on the top). Cool on a wire rack before slicing with a damp or lightly greased knife into 16 bars. Bars can be stored at room temperature or in the fridge.

3. My toppings kept falling everywhere as I hadn't pressed them down hard enough, so just in case I hadn't hit my sugar quota for the day I made a thin caramel syrup (10g butter, 4 tbsp sugar, a slosh of milk) to pour over the top of the bars while they were still in the pan, to hopefully glue the toppings on. This probably isn't necessary, but I just really like sugar.

Ah, sugar. My true friend. You would never forsake me for Classics revision.

Soulmate Cookies

I'm thinking of changing the aim of this blog. Rather than being a general food blog of whatever I make, I'm thinking maybe I should just dedicate the whole thing to The Best Chocolate Cookie Recipes The World Has Ever Known. Because I just keep coming across them.

I'm not doing it on purpose. I don't even eat cookies anywhere near as much as I eat, say, cake (which is more or less my staple food group. Yes, I'm going to die young; why do you ask?). But somehow these recipes keep wandering across my computer screen, or else recipe books conveniently fall open on them, or else I'll be tidying my room (okay, I'm using artistic license on this one) and come across something I printed off aeons ago and happen to have peanut butter in the fridge that no one in our house eats.

Who am I to argue with fate?


Incidentally, yes, I am apparently incapable of taking photographs of entire cookies. I did try, and I did take a couple, but they just didn't make me happy. Boo. So then I started breaking cookies in half and eating bits and taking photos of that, and then I was extremely happy and also well on my way down the road to obesity.

Fate seems to have delivered me my soulmate. Unsurprisingly, it's edible.



So let me tell you about these cookies. It's important that you know how good these are. This information might just save your life one day. For starters, you don't even bake them, just melt a load of stuff on your stove top, so once they're cool and set the consistency is more like fudge; but it's not at all grainy, just gooey and melty and dsnkjfnjksn hang on a minute while I regain my composure. Secondly, they don't call for chocolate in the ingredients but somehow these are ridiculously chocolatey and mood-boosting. Thirdly, I was suspicious of peanut butter (I'm British, okay? Peanut butter is practically foreign to me) but it's not at all overwhelming, and the presence of oats means you can trick yourself that it's doing you good.

Can we recap here? No chocolate. Oats. I even used low-fat peanut butter (part of me obviously recognising that I would be eating about twenty in the space of ten minutes). This is practically a health food.


The recipe for these is from Fancy Toast (it hasn't been updated in ages, but I'll link to it anyway as it's far funnier than any of my blog posts and outstrips my photography by miles. You have to promise to come back, though? Don't go off marauding through Fancy Toast and forsake me, 'kay?) so obviously I've translated the recipe into metric.

No Bake Oatmeal Chocolate Fudge Cookies of Love (or just No-Bakies)
Recipe from Fancy Toast: American measurements here.
I got about 20 out of this.

115g butter
400g sugar
4 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla
120ml milk
120ml peanut butter
282g quick oats

1. In a saucepan over medium-high heat, melt butter. Add next four ingredients and heat until the mixture comes to a boil. Boil for one minute, then remove from heat. Stir in peanut butter and oats.

2. Drop mixture by the spoonful onto a sheet of waxed paper, parchment paper, or aluminum foil. Allow no-bakies to cool until firm, approximately 20 minutes.

I'm taking these to a meal with friends tonight (yes, I do take my own food to meals X__X). I'm guarranteed to have a lot more friends by the end of it.