Peanut Butter and Jelly Brownies
I love putting a new spin on a classic recipe. I had the pleasure of enjoying these Peanut Butter and Jelly Brownies when I was hanging out with my friends Fiona, Aimee, and Katie one night a couple months ago. Fiona had whipped up quite the unique recipe. Her recipe involves cutting the brownies in half after they’ve been baked and cooled. When it came right down to it, I was just too lazy to commit to that kind of effort.
I know, it really isn’t that much additional effort, but that’s the decision I made. Instead of following Fiona’s recipe exactly, I decided to just use peanut butter chips in the brownies and top it with jelly, just like Fiona did. The outcome is a great combination of the classic peanut butter and jelly flavors mixed into a brownie. These were a huge hit, as to be expected.
One Year Ago: Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls and Indian Spiced Beans
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Peanut Butter and Jelly Brownies
Yield: 16 bars
Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup + 2 Tbsp sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp cocoa
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp espresso powder, optional
1/2 Tbsp vanilla
3/4 cup flour
1 cup peanut butter chips
1/2 cup red raspberry jelly
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9x9" pan
In a saucepan set over low heat, melt the butter, then add the sugar and stir to combine. Return the mixture to the heat briefly, just until it's hot, but not bubbling; it'll become shiny looking as you stir it. Heating this mixture a second time will dissolve more of the sugar, which will yield a shiny top crust on your brownies.
Transfer the sugar mixture to a medium-sized mixing bowl, if you've heated it in a saucepan. Stir in the cocoa, salt, baking powder, espresso powder, and vanilla.
Whisk in the eggs, stirring until smooth.
Add the flour and chips, again stirring until smooth.
Spoon the batter into a lightly greased pan.
In another pan or microwave dish, heat the jelly until warm and melted. Spoon warm jelly on top of brownie batter. Use a knife to swirl around to mix into brownies.
Bake the brownies for about 30 minutes, until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean, or with just a few moist crumbs clinging to it. The brownies should feel set on the edges, and the center should look very moist, but not uncooked. Remove them from the oven and cool completely prior to cutting.
Recipe adapted from A Boston Food Diary
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
Jen, I totally love your blog. You always ahve the BEST treats! I LOVE the picture with all the cookies resting on the m&ms. GREAT idea! 🙂
Looks beautiful as always!
perfect use of pink! So interesting about how the cookies reacted to the way you rolled them! Thanks for the heads up!
Your cookies look great and that’s a good tip about getting them to look their best too. My kids and all their friends love these cookies. I’ve made them a few times since I first posted them and they never last long.
thanks for the link!
~ Michelle
Those are beautiful and perfect for such a great cause
What an adorable picture! Also helps that they are for a great cause! 🙂
M&Ms are my favorite treat and I love that during this month everything is PINK! The cookies look fantastic.
I am bummed I missed your Power of Pink contest as I was utilizing October to raise awareness around breast cancer too! I made some cookies and have a post on my site: http://katskitchenplace.blogspot.com/2009/10/october-is-breast-cancer-awareness.html
I like the chocolate cookie base of your cookies! Thank you for sharing. Looking forward to checking back and seeing all what people make towards your challenge 🙂
A chocolate cookie topped with chocolate candies? What could be better? Perhaps a tall, ice cold glass of milk to go with them! They look divine. I’m wondering if you might skip the rolling and flattening by creating a wide log of dough (without M&Ms), slicing to the thickness desired, then pressing candies on top? Seems like the dough might be fairly easy to shape into a log. A quick pop into the fridge before slicing would help firm it up. Just a thought! I can’t wait to try them.
Best,
Casey
http://www.tastestopping.wordpress.com
P.S. Not sure if I’ve invited you before, but I’d love to publish any of your photos that FoodGawker and TasteSpotting decline! Thanks. 😀
I love the dark chocolate and pink M&M contrast. What fantastic cookies:)
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I just made your recipe for these cookies yesterday and took them to church. The kids went nuts and they’ve never turned out as pretty as they did this time. Thanks for the helpful tips because my m&m cookies have never turned out prettier! 9 minutes was also perfect timing as well.
Both pretty and I’m sure delicious! I love how you showed the comparison between batches to give better suggestions for prettier cookies. The final batch are definitely the prettiest of the bunch. I love that the pink pops w/the chocolate cookie.