The Peanut Butter Experiment

Chocolate Peanut Butter Brownies

I follow recipes.  I do not make things up when I am baking because so much depends on ratios and if you mess it up a little you might end up with a bad batch of brownies.  And that just seems like a waste of perfectly good ingredients.  So what happened tonight was out of necessity. Kind of.

I got home around 10 and started thinking about the dessert I have to make for a meat meal this Friday night at a friend's place.  She doesn't like for anyone to use margarine (actually, I don't really like using it all that much either) so I wanted a chocolate recipe for brownies that didn't call for butter or margarine.  I couldn't find one I liked online so I modified a cake recipe I've been making for years.  It uses oil instead of margarine or butter, which may not be much better than margarine, but for the moment I'll pretend.

Anyway, I wanted something with peanut butter, so I found some recipes online, mixed them in with the one I already had, and came out with a batch of brownies that (though I have yet to taste them) look pretty killer.

The ingredients are basic enough:
2 1/4 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup cold water
1/2 cup vegetable oil (or you can do 1/4 cup applesauce and 1/4 cup oil if you want to be healthier about it)
1/2 tbsp vanilla
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 cup chocolate chips

First turn the oven up to 350 degrees.  Then get out your handy dandy mixing bowl.  Technically you're supposed to mix the dry ingredients together and get out all the lumps, then separately mix the wet ingredients, and then pour the dry into the wet.  I know this will make a better, smoother cake but I hate having to wash the extra bowl so I just mix the wet ingredients:

and then add in all the dry ingredients at once.  As you're mixing the flour into the batter, put the peanut butter in the microwave for about 40 seconds until it's kind of soft and gooey.  I just microwave it in the glass measuring cup to save myself more dishes, but you can try microwaving it in the plastic container.  This might give you some disease down the road or just melt the plastic, but it might not.  Wow, this is like choose your own adventure baking!  Anyway, now you can pour half of the melted peanut butter in with the batter and mix it all up.  I guess this isn't necessary, but I figured the more peanut butter in the batter the better.

Now you can get out a round baking dish (or a square one, I won't be shape-ist) and oil/spray/butter it up.  Pour 3/4 of the chocolate batter into the dish, sprinkle the chocolate chips on top, and then dot the top of the batter with the melted peanut butter.  By which I mean take dollops (I really enjoy saying that word) of peanut butter and drop them across the top of the batter.  I got too excited about this to stop and take pictures, which would probably have been helpful for you.  Sucks to be you!  Haha, just kidding.  But back to the recipe...drop dollops (extra points for two usages in one post!) of the chocolate batter on top of the peanut butter and swirl it all around with a kitchen utensil.  I used a spoon.  I'm sure a steak knife or the tip of a ladle would work just as well. 

So anyway, now you put it in the oven and let it bake for 30 minutes.  If you're like me and enjoy the salmonellic thrill of undercooked brownies, take it out when it's still a little gooey in the center and (once it has cooled a bit) place it in the freezer.  It will now be delicious perfection.  Frozen brownie batter is what made Ben and Jerry famous after all.  Well, one of the reasons.

And now you have a great, dairy-free, margarine-free, peanut butter and chocolate dessert that everyone will love.  If they don't love it, they're probably crazy and aren't worthy of conversation anyway.  Not to be judgmental or anything, but I do have standards.

I'll re-post a warning if I bite into this and discover it's all bark and no bite.  I'm not really worried though.