Chocolate and Peanut Butter Creams

Have people had success with Martha's recipes? I subscribe to Everyday Food, and I find the recipes in there a little hit or miss. This weekend I made peanut butter and chocolate creams, which are basically heavy cream whipped with one of those two ingredients. For the peanut butter, you whip 3/4 cup heavy cream to stiff peaks, add 2 tablespoons sugar and whip to combine, then fold in 1/2 cup peanut butter. If you thought folding peanut butter into whipped cream would be hard, you'd be right. But it eventually worked.

The chocolate is what I really had a hard time with. You warm 3/4 cup heavy cream, pour it over 1/2 cup chocolate chips, let it sit for 5 minutes for the chocolate to melt, then stir to combine. Then pop it in the fridge for 15 minutes. When it's cool, whip until thick and fluffy. Only mine wouldn't get thick and fluffy. It had the texture of unset pudding. I usually chill the bowl and beaters when whipping cream and I didn't do that this time, so I stuck the whole thing in the freezer, then pulled it out and tried again, which made it worse. I ended up just freezing the chocolate cream, then I sandwiched the two creams between Nilla wafters and stuck them back in the freezer. They were pretty good that way. Martha's first suggestion for the creams was to eat them layered as a parfait, but I think that'd be way too rich. These little cookie sandwiches were perfect, like ice cream sandwiches with a slightly fudgier texture to the cream.