Easiest Dessert Ever: Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie

Sometimes you need your delicious desserts to be easy.  Really easy.

This weekend I was skiing in Bend, Oregon, with friends for spring break, and I wanted to make them a treat -- a vegan treat to impress all the doubting non-vegetarians in the group.  However, I didn't feel up to standing in the kitchen for too long after a long day of skiing in difficult, fresh snow.

So I turned to the easiest trick in my book: the no-bake, idiot-proof, easy-peasy chocolate peanut butter pie.  What makes this pie extra-easy is that you can cheat on almost every component and actually avoid any real cooking.  However, if you want to take it to the next level, you can make your own graham cracker crust (recipe below), which really is superior to the store bought stuff.

Citrus-Macadamia Double Chocolate Cookies

Yesterday afternoon, I was inspired to bake cookies for the freshman class I help teach because it was the second to last class that day.  I started off thinking "chocolate chip cookies," and I probably should have stopped there in the interest of accommodating their teenaged palates.  But, as I am wont to do, I had to get fancy.

The students ended up inhaling the cookies, so the subtle citrus aroma was probably wasted on them.  These do make a tasty and slightly more sophisticated alternative to chocolate chip cookies, though, if you want to impress your grown-up friends.  They're soft and chewy and chocolatey and orangey and kind of addicting.