Easy Peanut Butter Brownies Recipe

If you like your brownies crisp on the top and fudgy in the middle, and you also like peanut butter, my peanut butter brownies recipe is the one for you.

Everyone who likes brownies has a specific type of brownie they like: cakey or fudgy. I'm firmly on team fudgy, specifically with that crisp, crackly top.

My peanut butter brownie recipe is exactly that, only with the addition of crunchy peanut butter on top. You can, of course, omit the peanut butter and just make regular brownies with this recipe. Or you can use smooth peanut butter if you're not a crunchy PB fan. The choice is yours.

I've made these a couple of times now, first adapting an old BBC Good Food chocolate brownie recipe but adding and omitting a few of their ingredients. I also simplified the instructions (the original recipe had 14 or 15 steps – way too convoluted for a simple brownie).

You can also watch me make these on YouTube:

Ready? Let's go.

Ingredients:

185g unsalted butter
185g dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa solids)
275g caster sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
85g plain flour
40g cocoa powder
Pinch of salt
1/3 of a 275g-ish jar of your favourite peanut butter

Method:

1. Grease an 8x12" rectangular baking tin with a little vegetable oil and line with non-stick baking paper (the oil will help the paper cling to the tin and not move around).

2. Melt the chocolate and butter together. You can do this in a bowl in a microwave in short bursts. If, like me, you don't have a microwave: set a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely-simmering water, making sure the water's not too high and doesn't touch the bottom of the pan, and melt the butter and chocolate in the bowl.

3. Take the bowl off the heat, and stir in the caster sugar to help cool the mixture down. Then beat in the eggs and vanilla.

4. Now for the dry ingredients: dump in the flour and sift in the cocoa powder (make sure you sift the latter because it tends to get clumpy). Add the salt, and stir everything together until smooth.

5. Scrape into your prepared tin, and dollop over your peanut butter. Swirl the top with a knife until you're happy with the pattern and distribution of peanut butter.

6. Bake for 25 minutes, and then leave to cool before cutting and serving.

Enjoy, and have fun.