Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Blondies

I love peanut butter!  I’m the type that could eat a whole spoonful (or 2) of peanut butter and say, “More please!”  It’s not a surprise that my favorite chocolate candy is Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.  So when I discovered these delectable treats on Bake at 350, I just knew I had to try them out.  I knew the girls at my Thursday night Bible study wouldn’t mind being my guinea pigs, and they were such a hit that I decided to make them again on Saturday night for our dinner at our friends Connie and Jason’s house.  The way I described these when someone asked what they were is, “They’re like a chocolate chip, peanut butter cookie in the shape of a brownie.”  Yum!

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 6 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup chunky peanut butter (or you can certainly use smooth peanut butter if you don’t want whole peanuts in your blondies)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup chocolate chips (semi-sweet)

Start by whisking flour, salt, and baking powder together in a medium bowl.

In another, larger bowl, add your peanut butter and softened butter.

Mix until thoroughly combined.  (Note: I accidentally put my butter in the microwave for too long and it was completely melted.  That’s why the butter and peanut butter mixture looks so runny.  It turned out fine, but next time I made sure to only soften my butter, not completely melt it.)

Next, add your sugars.

And mix thoroughly with your peanut butter mixture.

Add your eggs one at a time and mix until combined.  You’ll want to scrape the sides of the bowl to make sure there are no stray ingredients that would rather stick to the bowl than combine with all the other ingredients.

Next, add the flour mixture.

And mix until combined.

Next comes the best part….the chocolate!!  Unfortunately I only had about a half a cup of chocolate chips in my freezer, so mine weren’t as chocolaty as they could have been.  But they were still good!  Fold in the chocolate chips with your spoon or spatula.

Grease an 8×8 baking dish and pour in your batter, spreading evenly.  You’ll definitely want to lick any extra batter off your spoon/beaters/bowl.  Then try not to finish off the unbaked batter in your baking dish.  I know you’ll want to, but a little restraint is good sometimes. 🙂

Bake at 350° for 30-32 min.  Let it cool completely before you cut into squares.  At the Bible study we cut into it when it was still pretty warm and it was VERY gooey!  Didn’t matter to us, though.  We ended up scooping it out and eating it with spoons since we couldn’t wait for it to cool completely.  And, this is why I don’t have any pictures of the finished product for you.  For one thing, I had to rush out the door right when the timer on the oven beeped so that I would make it on time to Bible study, and secondly, I didn’t have my camera with me when we cut into it.  So you’ll just have to settle for the beautiful picture that Bridget took for her Bake at 350 blog.  If you haven’t checked it out yet, I highly recommend popping on over there sometime and spending hours looking through all her amazing cookies and baked goods.  You can get to her site by clicking on either of the links at the top of this post, or you can find her in the “Blogs I’m Following” section on the right of my blog.

Enjoy!  I know you will!