day 26 - peanut butter cup brownies

Today was one of those days I wanted to make something from what was in the house.  I didn't want to go out of the house, I didn't want to work too hard, I wanted to be lazy.  So what did I make?  Brownies. No, not from a mix, from scratch, duh!  But plain old brownies just aren't that exciting to me.  However, once you add peanut butter?  Ooooh, now that is good!

So out comes my cocoa powder.  I prefer to make brownies with cocoa powder, only because I don't ALWAYS have a variety of chocolate in the house to use.  If you have chocolate sitting around, those are great too.  Today I used the recipe on the back, simple standard ingredients.  Melted butter, cocoa powder, sugar, eggs, vanilla, flour and salt.  That is the batter.  Now for the peanut butter filling.  I mixed together creamy peanut butter, melted butter, powdered sugar and some vanilla until it was smooth.  I choose to use muffin cups - only because my 8x8 pan was in the freezer with a casserole - but they are also easy for the kids too.  In the bottom put just a dolop of brownie, then top it with some of the peanut butter and finally more brownie.  Bake in a 350*F oven for about 30 minutes.  The peanut butter seemed to ooze out of my brownies, so they look a little funny, but they certainly taste great.    If you have any vanilla ice cream left over from Christmas, it would be delicious on these warmed up.  Enjoy!