My Perfect Peanutbutter Chocolate Brownies! (Hyperbolic, I know, but so so good)

I have been experimenting with peanut butter chocolate brownie recipes for a few months now and about two weeks ago I finally pieced together a bunch until they tasted exactly how I wanted. What's here is a long "from scratch" version of the recipe, but right after I will post my shortcut version of the recipe which tastes almost as good.

Ingredients:

1 pound unsalted butter

1 pound semisweet chocolate chips

6 ounces unsweetened chocolate (if you can’t find baking chocolate, use those bitter German chocolate bars you can find in any grocery store or bodega– the fat purple squares, you know what I’m saying?)

6 extra-large eggs

2 tablespoons real vanilla extract

2 1/4 cups sugar

½ cup Nutella (yes, Nutella!)

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ cup creamy natural/unsweetened peanut butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour your brownie pan (13x9, or bigger, whatever you have – you can just make according to thickness of the pan)

Melt together the butter, 1 pound chocolate chips, and unsweetened chocolate on top of a double boiler. Cool slightly.

Stir together the eggs, vanilla and sugar. Stir in the warm chocolate mixture and cool to room temperature.

Put the Nutella in the microwave for about 10 seconds to loosen it up a little bit, then stir it into the mixture (don’t overstir, but get it mixed in).

Stir together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add to cooled chocolate mixture. Then add to the chocolate batter. Pour into prepared pan.

Then, put your peanut butter in the microwave for about 30 seconds until it is melted and liquidy. Pour the peanut butter as evenly as you can in 3 or 4 rows (depending on wide the pan is) across the width of the pan. Take a butter knife and run it straight down from top to bottom. Then do this again a few inches apart from bottom to top. Repeat until you have one of those pretty swirled arrow designs up and down. If you’re not sure what I mean, then you can also just glop the peanut butter all over the brownies, Jackson Pollock style. It doesn’t matter. It will be amazing no matter what. (It should look something like this.)

Bake for about 30 minutes, until the knife comes out clean enough (though in my oven these are sometimes ready in about 20 minutes, so just check a few times) . I say clean enough because it's better if they are a little underdone; they will continue cooking outside of the oven and you really want thehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifm chewy and fudgey and delicious. No one wants a dry brownie. At least I don't think...


LAZY BONES RECIPE

Buy a box of Betty Crocker or Duncan Heins (whichever) fudgey brown mix. Make it as you always would, just replace apple sauce for the oil, add the Nutella into the batter before pouring it into the pan, and glop on/beautifully swirl the peanut butter as specified above. It's not AS good as the above recipe, but it takes a quarter of the time, saves you some money, and they taste really f-ing good.