Chocolate Peanut Butter Chia Pudding

We only moved from Wellington just over a year ago but my gosh it seems like a lifetime ago.  We were pre-baby, living right next to town with a magnificent view overlooking the beautiful harbour.   We used to just stroll on down to the centre of town and go to one of the many amazing eateries right at our door step. Life is most definitely very different now with a little 10 month old to chase around!!

One of our 'locals' was this funky American-style diner at the bottom of our road that did the most ah-mazing Reese's peanut butter chocolate milkshakes.

I've been feeling rather nostalgic recently and missing our Wellingtonian mates and local haunts so I thought I might recreate a little piece of our windy city life by making Chocolate Peanut Chia Puddings as a healthified homage to our Welly life.

Christmas noms: Peanut butter caramel fudge

Not to get all Nigella on you or anything but this stuff is like crack.  (Too soon??)

It’s creamy, salty-sweet, peanutty perfection. And so gosh darn addictive it really should be illegal. Oh, and did I mention it only takes like 10 minutes to make? Stop it!

I made it for the Baking for Hospice Christmas round just been and found myself “tasting” a substantial amount of it. Just to quality check it of course.

I don't even usually like fudge.  Usually it's too sweet and crumbly and just like eating a sugar cube, but these puppies are chewy and creamy and the peanut butter gives it a salty sweet edge making them ridiculously easy to eat.

To be honest I just could not stop shovelling this stuff into my face.  Yes, I went a bit nuts over it.

Peanut Butter Caramel Fudge, why you so good?

Peanut butter truffles

Practice is the best of all instructors ~ Publilius Syrus

My dancing instructors used to always drum into us to practise, practise, practise.  Everyone starts off completely rookie but to remember your routine / get down in the splits / perform well in front of an audience / pretty much get good at anything: you have to do it over and over and over again.

Which is all good and dandy when you're talking about whirling around in a sparkly costume but a completely different story when you're learning to put in a cannula.

Today was my very first go at putting in an i.v. line and...well, I wasn't a natural.  I managed to jab myself with a (clean) needle.  Then managed to stab straight through the house surgeon's vein and give him a massive bruise at the back of his hand.  Oh dear.

Surely I can only get better at it right?!?

I know at least that baking definitely gets easier with practice, as does making truffles.  Have made a few different types of truffles over the years: good old ganache truffles, eggnog truffles, raspberry truffles, oreo truffles and most recently these Peanut Butter Truffles.  And it's gone from a stressful messy process to a kinda fun messy process.  One can only hope this medicine thing is similar....