Averie Cooks Peanut Butter-Swirled Fudgy Brownies

I’ve been making lots of peanut butter recipes recently. Even more so than usual.

But I doubt you’re complaining.

I’m on vacation and make things that I know will turn out and that we like. This isn’t the time I want to experiment.

And I’ll never say no to peanut butter and chocolate, especially by way of dense, fudgy, rich, one-bowl brownies.

I have three main brownie base recipes on my site, that all others are derived from.

They’re each one-bowl, no-mixer recipes, that you can make in less than 5 minutes. As fast as using a boxed mix and they include:

Three eggs with melted chocolate in a 9×9 pan

Two eggs with cocoa powder in a 8×8 pan

Two eggs with cocoa powder in a 9×9 pan

I went for option two because the smaller the batch size, the better. I’m getting into a swimsuit daily.

Also, I tend not to keep chocolate bars on hand here in Aruba because they melt, whereas I always have cocoa powder stashed.

I melted the butter in the micro, whisked in the rest of the ingredients, and since I didn’t want to be bothered with having to frost them after baking, I swirled in peanut butter before baking.

I’m a big fan of peanut butter swirls and swirls in general. They’re a time-saver and they taste good. A win-win.

There are two major turnoffs for me with brownies, cakey and dry, and these are neither. They’re thick, dense, rich, ultra-fudgy, with zero traces of cakiness nor dryness.

Although cocoa powder sometimes gets a bad rap compared to melted chocolate, thousands of people love these cocoa powder brownies as I wrote about. You’ll change your mind about cocoa powder after trying them.

They’re not too sweet, very chocolaty, and I amp the chocolate intensity with a splash of coffee and espresso granules to bring out and enhance the chocolatiness, but they don’t make the brownies taste like coffee.

The peanut butter adds a touch of saltiness and balances the chocolate intensity.

And everything is better with peanut butter.