Peanut Butter Chocolate Pudding

That time of the year has rolled around again, that time when grown men are allowed to cry and hug each other unabashedly, hurl insults and other throw-able objects at the TV (or other nearby people wearing the wrong colors) and everybody feels just a little bit Canadian (except for actual Canadians, who just feel pretty normal). Yup, the NHL Playoffs are here and Eric is that excited. Actually, he's more excited than that, but we can't print that level of excitement here, this is a family blog! Really the only thing that's been able to cut into talk about his new job has been the start of the playoffs. He spent some serious time getting ready this year: washing all his sharks shirts, getting his jerseys in line, polishing his Sharks gnome (a gift from Cherlyn and Dave that Charisse has restricted to the garage, yes still finds it sitting on shelves around the house) and watching as much hockey has he can take. In other words he's like everyone else who lives in San Jose, Sharks obsessed. Since we don't have tickets this year (yet!) we'll be watching on TV and having people over for assorted Sharks viewing parties and one of the best things to have a viewing party is DESSERT! Last season, we had our friends Dan and Jen over for one and right in the middle of the game, there was a distinct hankering for Ice Cream. Eric like to pretend it was the girls who sent us to the store during intermission and give them a hard time about it, but everyone knows he wanted the ice cream just as bad. This time around, we're not going to get left without, not when we've got Peanut Butter Chocolate Pudding! It's seriously half chocolate pudding, half peanut butter pudding, all awesome. It's like a Reece's peanut butter cup in pudding form, but better.  

Printable Recipe

Marbled Chocolate and Peanut Butter Bundt Cake With Salted Caramel Glaze

Every time we use the bundt pan, there is a period of at least 5 minutes where the only thing heard in our kitchen is laughter and that stuttering "it's a bundt" "a butt?" "a bundt!" "a bunk?" "A BUNDT!" "Ahh, its a cake" conversation from My Big Fat Greek Wedding. You'd thank that after all this time, 8 years, that the joke would have lost its edge. Nope, we still make it and we still laugh. Its amazing what being in a good mood can do for your sense of humor, the better the mood, the easier the laughs. Why it takes two college educated grownups to figure out what any 4 year old could tell you we'll never know, but its still as true as can be. Its also true that good food can change your whole mood too. In this case, we did this cake on a day particularly in need of a better mood: bill paying day. Bill paying day is a very dangerous day around our parts as the bank accounts go from being full of newly cashed paychecks to being decidedly less full. I think everyone can attest to that being a big wet blanket on any given day. Sometimes the fates work out and we have people over for dinner on bill paying day, which often adds a big grocery bill on top of everything else. The secret to fixing bill day is something that every woman already knows and every guy (including Eric) refuses to admit is that chocolate always makes things better. (Eric says "its because eating anything raises endorphin levels as the body. Endorphins are the bodies way of rewarding any species for acts that encourage survival and reproduction". Chraisse said that was dumb, and chocolate tastes so good because its chocoalate. And that was the end of that argument). This particular chocolate was indeed in the form of a bundt cake, marbled with peanut butter and covered in a homemade, salted caramel glaze and definitely made bill paying day better.