Friday, April 16, 2010

Peanut, Peanut Butter (and Chocolate)


My favorite professor in law school frequently cautioned that things always take longer than you think they will. Such was the case with these brownies, which I planned to bring to a dinner party last Friday night. The problem was, the dinner party started at 7, and I couldn’t be bothered to read the recipe in advance. If I had, I would have known you are supposed to cool them completely before you put the chocolate on top. As it was, I was going to be late, and I had to take these brownies from the oven to my car pretty much immediately. Cooling time was not an option. So when I got to the party, they were a little bit soupy, but after an hour in the fridge, they turned out pretty good. And over the week (as I ate them in inappropriate quantities from my fridge) they tasted even better because the chocolate layer had an opportunity to properly harden.

A couple of warnings about these things:
(1) They are addicting. I came home with 2/3 of the pan from the dinner party (it was a small gathering with lots of desserts), and despite my roommate's help, I managed to consume far far far too many of these.
(2) They do not taste like peanut butter cups. I was sort of expecting something more along that line, but alas I guess we'll have to rely on Nigella's recipe for that. (Is it on this blog??)
(3) Deb says she used organic PB when she made these. I used full fat skippy. I found the PB taste to be somewhat understated. Next time, I'd make them with natural PB and a quarter teaspoon of salt or so.

2 comments:

Elizabeth said...

Two comments:

1) Oh god, these look too delicious. DAMN YOU.

2) You made decadent PB/chocolate brownie things with fat free Skippy? That's BARELY peanut butter, yo. A travesty.

kzwick said...

No, no. I used full fat skippy. Bought it just for this purpose. As much as I am okay with reduced fat PB in general, I know better than to use it in cooking. Especially for other people. If I'd had some Smooth Operator, I'd have used that.