Peanut Butter Brownies

I've had a craving for chocolate lately. Not like a craving for a Snickers bar or something silly and horribly processed but nice truffles or gooey brownies or something full of chocolate chips. You may be thinking that this isn't worthy of a blog post! Everyone loves chocolate! Not me... I'm not a huge chocolate person. It's just been lately.

And I love peanut butter. I may have an addiction.

So these are perfect. Or at least I thought they would be. I hunted for a recipe in all my books, in all my files and nothing. So I Googled. Lots of recipes. None with chocolate. Isn't the whole point of a brownies supposed to be the chocolate? Why a peanut butter brownie recipe with no chips or no cocoa? Does this make sense to anyone else?

So I added chocolate to the recipe. Simples.

P.S. these are not very healthy. I'd be lying and a complete hypocrite if I tried to say that. But enjoy them anyway.

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/3 cup (75g) softened butter or margarine

2/3 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup cocoa

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Cream butter and peanut butter. Gradually cream in sugars, eggs and vanilla extract.

Stir together flour, baking powder, cocoa and salt. Slowly stir this into peanut butter mix.

Pour into greased or lined pan. Bake at 350F/175C/gas 5 for 30 minutes or until set. If you like your brownies gooey, take them out a little earlier.

I added peanuts to mine as I like them crunchy. If I had chocolate chips on hand, I would have added those to. Experiment! I think the next time I try these, I'll do a brownie base and add a creamy peanut butter top then marble it in. Wish I would have thought of that earlier... :(

Double Chocolate Brownies

Another picnic. Another chance to try out a healthier version of a recipe. And it almost went well. Brownies came out a little gooey, which is great for standing at the kitchen counter, picking at the goo and licking the chocolate off my fingers. In the future, I'll try a bigger pan to spread out the batter. That will give me a lot more nice crispy edges that I love.

Either way, it's only 111 calories and 4 grams of fat per bar. So even if you have to lick the goo off your fingers, go for it.

4 tbsp butter
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup cold water
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup milk or semi sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350/gas 4

Melt butter. Remove from heat and stir in sugar, water and vanilla. Mix in flour, cocoa and baking powder. Add chocolate chips pieces. Baking times will vary depending on your pan; I kept mine in the over for about 45 minutes. You want to be able to stick a skewer into the middle and it comes out clean and the edges crispy.

Sorry no pictures, my actual camera is in a friend's car and my iPhone died this weekend. Hopefully I'll have pictures for the rest of the recipes this week. But you all know what a brownie is supposed to look like.