Cooking: Fast No-Bake Cookies for Valentine's Day!

Forgive my- wait, what? Against all odds, One Direction seems to have written and performed something that's actually pretty mature. I'm as leery of "That's What Makes You Beautiful" as the next person, but but this is a definite step up for them. They probably won't keep that up consistently, but it's nice to hear they've got it in 'em.

In a fit of inspiration and physics procrastination I decided last night around midnight to make some snacks for Valentine's Day! I don't do anything really for V-Day, but it felt suitably festive and I wanted some good vibes about doing something for a special occasion.
But it's midnight, I'm kind of afraid of the oven (not bad, but I rather not use it if I can help it), and I don't even know if we have any materials in the house, plus I did have physics to do.

Thankfully, I had just the recipe!
http://majnouna.deviantart.com/art/Quick-food-No-bake-cookies-432615208

Image and Recipe by Joumana Medlej of majnouna.com, check out all of her recipes HERE!

So Joumana Medlej makes this whole series of one-page "Quick Food" recipes, with a bunch of different ethnic foods in addition to more western fare, and they're all really cutely drawn. I love them, but this is the first one I've actually tried.

I did a few substitutions. Like I said, I wasn't sure if the house was stocked for this, but it turns out that the only scarcity-driven substitution was trading out the whole oats for Quaker Quick Oats, which are a smaller cut of oat so it provides a bit of a different texture.
I used Dark Cocoa, as that's what I found. I don't think it made a big difference.
I also substituted out the peanut butter, because I actually don't like peanut butter! In the comments on the recipe page, someone mentions just leaving it out, and someone idly posits if Nutella would work. Running on that idea of putting in something of the same consistency, I used a Banana-Chocolate Spread we got from World Market.

This stuff is actually really good.

It worked! Here's the result.

These are cookies, I swear. What else would they be?

They're pretty darn great! As the description on the dA page notes, they're quite sweet, and my substitute sure as heck had more sugar than peanut butter does. They aren't soft now that the chocolate has hardened, but they aren't hard like solid chocolate (I think the butter is responsible). They likely won't harden or go stale very quickly since they lack any of the usual stuff that leads to staleness. The recipe made 14 cookies which were slightly more than 2" in diameter and maybe 2cm tall at the middle, which are pretty big - I couldn't decide how many I wanted to make so I just went with this for an experiment. The banana taste from the spread is definitely present, which was surprising and actually quite tasty. Based on that, the peanut butter taste would probably have been decently prominent in the original.
And they really did only take about an hour from start to eating, and could be even faster if you actually know where stuff is and are comfortable working in your kitchen. I recommend trying 'em, and I think I'm gonna do another thing soon-ish. I need to get more comfortable cooking with heat (mild 'phobia' of getting burned), so these are nice for that.

Later folks, have a great V-Day.
End Recording,
Ego.