Triple Chocolate Peanut Clusters

Name: Triple Chocolate Peanut Clusters
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 20 min
Ingredients: 4 oz. semi-sweet chocolate (chopped); 2 oz. milk chocolate (chopped); 2 oz. German chocolate (chopped); 1 tsp vanilla extract; 1½ cups dry roasted peanuts; 1 cup salted cashew halves; sea salt

ByDavid July 15, 2016April 12, 2021

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Looking for a sweet mid-afternoon snack? How about some Triple Chocolate Peanut Clusters!

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So Laura was out of town this past weekend. She took Robbie and went down to her family’s summer crab-eating fest in Maryland. I had other commitments here at home, so I stayed back with the dogs and had a bachelor-style weekend. I ate pizza and ramen. I woke up at 11am. I didn’t shave, and I played video games all day long. Oh, who am I kidding? I didn’t do any of that stuff. (Well, except for the pizza…)

I spent the weekend working on projects around the house. Nothing too crazy. Just a couple of projects that had been on the list for months. Projects I’d never gotten around to thanks to a certain 8-month-old baby. Back when Laura and I got married, a friend of the family had given us this really cool handmade birdhouse. It was kinda rustic with rough wood and this awesome piece of gnarly driftwood attached to the front. We’ve had that birdhouse hanging on our shed for several years now, and we’ve seen a couple different birds make homes there.

Then this past winter, the squirrels discovered the birdhouse. There were no birds living there, and I don’t think the squirrels wanted to get in it. Rather, they just made a game out of chewing the wood up. I remember seeing them do it one day last January. I went out and chased them away, but by then they had already gnawed a huge hole in the wood. What the heck, squirrels?

Instead of throwing out the birdhouse, I decided to fix it. I pulled off the front panel of wood (saving the awesome driftwood, of course!) and cut a new piece of wood the same size. After a bit sanding and staining, I had a new front panel ready to go. Of course, I had to make the hole for the birds to go in and that required a trip to the home improvement store and a new set of circle saw drill bits. But all in all, the project was a success! In fact, that front panel is better than it was before. It’s now on hinges so that I can easily pop it open and clean out the old nest after the birds move on.

But I didn’t work all weekend. I definitely treated myself to some fun, too. Each afternoon, I grabbed my book and headed out to the couch on the back porch. I often pretend to read at night, but I usually only make it about 5 pages before I fall asleep. But I made it through a whole chapter in the afternoon! Of course, a nice relaxing afternoon on the porch required snacks, and that’s where these Triple Chocolate Peanut Clusters came in.

These peanut clusters take all of about 10 minutes to make…and that’s including the time spent washing the dishes. Chocolate-covered peanuts have long been one of my favorite guilty pleasures. (I get that from my Dad…we’d always get him chocolate-covered peanuts for Father’s Day.) But chocolate-covered peanuts can be quite expensive in the store, so I just chose to make my own Triple Chocolate Peanut Clusters at home. Plus, by making them at home, I was able to mix up the ingredients…like 3 kinds of chocolate and 2 kinds of nuts. Epic afternoon snack right there!

Hot summer afternoons require more than peanut clusters. They require cool, tasty drinks, too. I recently discovered International Delight’s Iced Coffee, and it was the perfect treat for my mid-afternoon Game of Thrones reading on the back porch. Iced coffee isn’t just coffee with ice in it! Nope, it’s coffee that steeps in cold water overnight…and it’s quite tasty. (I made this Salted Caramel Mocha Iced Coffee last summer.) But with Robbie around now, we don’t often have time to think ahead and make a batch of iced coffee overnight. Instead, I just grabbed a container of Mocha Iced Coffee at the store. Delicious!

I’m thinking International Delight’s Iced Coffee needs to keep making regular afternoon appearances now that Laura and Robbie are back in town. I usually want to take a nap around 3:30pm, and a nice glass of iced coffee will be the perfect afternoon pick-me-up! But don’t expect to find any more of the Triple Chocolate Peanut Clusters. Those didn’t last long, and we’ll just pretend (for Laura’s sake) that they never actually existed. Cheers!

International Delight’s Iced Coffee flavors include: Mocha (Regular and Light), Caramel Macchiato (Regular and Light) and Vanilla (Regular).