Peanut Butter Cup Brownies

It seems so wrong to be posting about brownies when I'm in the middle of my healthy eating venture. But these were offered at a little party we attended for the last Charger's playoff game (and that happened to be one day prior to the start of my venture). They didn't serve as good luck by any means as we sadly lost the game to the Steelers, but they were held in high praise by a whole bunch of hungry football fans. If you're a lover of all things chocolate + pb, then this one is for you: Peanut Butter Cup Brownies.

Yes, those yummy little Peanut Butter Cups that we all love to devour get the starring role in this brownie.

Here's the How-To:

Here are the goods... you'll need some sort of unsweetened chocolate. I used Scharffen Berger since I had some leftover from Christmas. There's also a specialty ingredient: Chocolate Extract. You can find it at Whole Foods or online, but if you'd rather not use it then just sub vanilla. And then for the peanut butter lovers in the house, not only are there Peanut Butter Cups in these brownies but added peanut butter and peanut butter chips too.


Sugar, butter, peanut butter, eggs and extract are mixed together.

Melted chocolate is blended in.

The flour is mixed in next.

And the peanut butter chips are stirred in last.

The batter is spread into a foiled and greased pan. I used a quarter-sheet pan (about 13x9) as I find that that's the easiest for getting brownies out of the pan safely. You can also use any other 13x9 inch pan.

If you chill the brownies well, you can easily get the brownies out of the pan without breaking them apart. Place a cutting board upside down on top of the pan and gently flip it over. Peel the foil off. Your brownies will now be upside down, so place another cutting board on the bottom of the brownies and then flip them back over. They'll be nice and firm and easy to cut clean squares.

I like to cut the edges off of the brownies and make nicely cut squares. We save the edges for sampling :)

These were everything a brownie should be... chocolatey, fudgy and moist. And all of that added peanut butter stuff happened to be quite a good idea. Kids and adults alike really loved these, and they'll go into that 'definitely make these again' pile.

This recipe can be found HERE.