Knishnaut: Peanut Butter Chocolate

Person 1: "Hey! You got PB& chocolate in my knish!" Person 2: "Hey! You got knish in my PB & chocolate!"

 Having fully recovered from the Knishening this past weekend, the main thing on the to-do list was....make more knishes. A full quart of left over potato filling needed attending to, and with the help of a bag o' the green stuff, I popped out a couple dozen potato and spinach/roasted garlic samples to get off to various people who might be able to help KNYC in the spring. However, there was the vexing question of enough filling for 24 knishes but enough dough for 25....

They're so innocent and full of potential when they're young.

I'm not about to cook a whole batch of some filling prevent the waste of one little scrap of dough, so I go hunting - bubbe style: I search for left overs. The mac n' cheese made from scratch on Wednesday have already been devoured by certain unnamed members of my family, so I was gonna have to go deeper. I did have a handful of chocolate chips.... but not enough to fill a knish.

Peanut butter goes well with chocolate, and when I have limited amounts of chocolate, PB is a good extender. I took out a work bowl, threw down one heaping table spoon of natural peanut butter. To it, a teaspoon of shortening, a teaspoon of sugar, one egg yolk, a pinch of salt, and a double pinch of flour. Tossed in the chips, rolled it into a ball, wrapped it in knish dough like it wasn't an unwelcome guest to the party, and into the oven after the egg wash.

That's the way this knish crumbles.

 The ingredients I laid down, in different proportions, could be three things: peanut butter chocolate pie, peanut butter chocolate cookie, or peanut butter chocolate fudge. What came out was somewhere between pie and cookie -- surprisingly light, moist, delicate, rich but not overwhelming. The glutenous potato-based dough wasn't a great match for it, but the flakier sweet knish dough I use would probably work fine. But it got me thinking:

I'm not a huge fan of fudge, its most common occurrence is in poor quality at tourist traps. But fresh fudge made with the right ingredients can be delightful, except for its form factor: it comes in ungainly cubical blocks that have to be held with paper, or fudgy shmears are guaranteed on your fingers. If said fudge were contained on 2 or 3 sides by a nice thin sweet knish dough....now THAT could be like Mr. Nathan introducing hot dog to bun! Well, maybe not, but a knishman can dream....