Browned Butter Peanut Butter Cup Brownies

One week later, I think I have finally made a full recovery from Vegas. My body was hurtin’ worse than Party Marg and I made a lot of promises to my trainer Tuesday morning when I started my post-Vegas-recovery-detox. She suggested trying no sugar and no booze for a month. Tuesday morning at 5:30am, I was like oh ABSOLUTELY that sounds like a great idea, definitely doable, a hundred percent. In all honesty, I spent a lot of time yesterday browsing healthy cookie recipes. There are a number of people at work trying Paleo diets right now and my mom is gluten-free, so I figured I would try to experiment with something healthy this week. But then comes the weekend. One glass of red wine last night reminded me that sugar and booze are what makes the world go round, and there is no way a cookie is going to taste as good if it’s sugar free. So rather than sit on a throne of lies and bake some healthy cookies and write a whole post about how you couldn’t even taste that these brownies were made with black beans instead of sugar — I decided to stick to what I know best: butter and sugar.

I’ll tell you a little more at the end of this post, but I was in need of some peanut butter and chocolate medicine for the soul in my life today, so I perused the interweb for some new brownie recipes and came across a browned butter brownie recipe from somethingswanky.com . I had picked up some mini Reese’s cups at the grocery store yesterday and figured I would make her recipe my own by upping the ante with some PB and PB cups. I was a little nervous about how they would come out since they didn’t seem to be setting right in the oven, but after letting them sit outside the oven for a little bit, wham bam 4 thumbs up from me and my live-in taste tester.

Ingredients:

  • 2 1/4 sticks salted butter
  • 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
  • 2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 1/2 cups cocoa powder
  • 1 cup all purpose flour
  • 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1 cup mini peanut butter cups

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Brown the butter over the stove in a medium saucepan. If you need more details on browning butter, take a look at this post from a few months back for step by step instructions. Let the brown butter cool a little before putting it in the mixer.

Step 2: Add the peanut butter and sugar to the mixer and mix well. Add in vanilla extract and eggs and blend until incorporated.

IMG_0915

IMG_0917

Step 3: In a separate bowl, sift together flour, cocoa powder and salt. Sifting cocoa powder is important to break up the lumps. Add this to the wet mixture and mix on a low speed.

IMG_0910

Step 4: Add in the chocolate chips and peanut butter cups. If you can’t find the mini ones, you can coarsely chop regular peanut butter cups.

IMG_0920

IMG_0913

Step 5: Line the bottom of a 13×9 glass baking dish with parchment paper. This will make it a lot easier to remove the brownies after. If you don’t have parchment, just grease it well. Spread the batter evenly in the baking dish, and bake at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes. Let them set for at least half an hour so they set before cutting into them.

IMG_0925

You’ll need a tall glass of milk to wash these down and a 5-mile run to burn these off, but it will be totally worth it. I struggled to get a good picture tonight. Probably would have been easier if I let them actually cool. But instead I stood on top of the kitchen table (very safe) and almost burned my hair off kneeling on the island to try to get creative with the pics. But you’ll just have to deal with these few awkward shots.

IMG_0933

IMG_0937

IMG_0934

Yeah for spring manicure colors! IMG_0944

Speaking of running, I won’t be doing any of that this week. I played tennis for a few hours yesterday morning which was a great way to start off my Saturday, until I ran for a shot and twisted my ankle and sprained it. I am not a big believer in getting sick or hurt (like when I went a week with a broken arm before getting a real x-ray so I had to admit it was really broken), so I pretended it was fine yesterday, but when I woke up today my left ankle was twice the size of my right. Womp womp.

If you know the real me (not just the Salted Cookie Lady version of me), you’ll know that I actually do have a dating life (no cat lady here … yet). I send out some pretty detailed post-date-debriefs to a core group of my favorite friends after each date, which have started getting forwarded around since I apparently have a witty way of documenting the dates – especially since each guy has a fruit or vegetable code name. (Can we all take a second to remember “Kevin Mango: The Politically Incorrect Non-Planner who told me there would be something wrong with me if I didn’t like guacamole). And once I figure out a way to write them so that no guy could figure out it was written about them as well as figure out the perfect blog name, you’ll definitely want to subscribe to that blog. Anyways, while I am sure at their core my friends all want me to end up with someone and live happily ever after, I’m fairly certain (because they have bluntly told me this) that they would like to read about my adventures in dating for a few more years. So the purpose of divulging all that, is that today I was in need of some medicine for the heart and soul: peanut butter and chocolate, which inspired these brownies. As Skip called him today, “fall off the face of the earth” boy has not made a reappearance, since he fell off the face of the earth (hopefully, literally) a few weeks ago, which just continues to bug me, since I am not great at letting things go. And if you’re reading this FOTFOTEB, don’t worry I’m not going to go all Taylor Swift on you in this post. But just know, you’re not on Skip’s good side. But, as the great poet Jay-Z so eloquently once said, “on to the next one.” The browned butter brownie definitely made me, my ankle and my mind feel a bit better tonight.

And since I was still bummin about Skip and Linda (aka Mom and Dad’s) trip to Vegas getting cancelled, I met them halfway today at Mohegan Sun for a great day of people watching and losing some money in the slot machines. Now that is what I call a Sunday Funday. Also, I would be remiss to not give a shoutout to Mother Nature today, so big ups to you lady nature for gracing us with a winter heatwave (50 degrees) and melting some of the snow piles on the street. Since our gutters are clogged, we have some giant icicles of death on the side of the house, that keep intermittently crashing down making it sound like the roof collapsed. Just like a white noise machine to help you sleep soundly at night.

And last but not least, I’d like to at least acknowledge a small victory in healthy-living from this past week (just in case my trainer happens to be reading this, hi Rita). Cauliflower pizza is apparently all the rage now with low-carb and Paleo people alike, so I attempted to make some since it is gluten free and I’m always looking for new recipes to try out for Linda. I won’t lie, it came out pretty friggin good. Although I’m a big believer that with enough cheese anything can taste good. So that’s all for this week. Let’s hope for more sunshine than snow.

image (6)