Chewy peanut butter brownies are like little bites of heaven

No one will ever convince me that peanut butter and chocolate aren’t the best dessert pairing ever. Yes, caramel with chocolate is a surefire winning combo. Marshmallow, chocolate and graham crackers? You’d have to pry the s’mores out of my cold dead hands if I died in front of a campfire (in which case my hands probably wouldn’t be cold). And yes, you can put just about any flavor (even margarita!) into a cheesecake and it’s a brilliant idea.

But Reese’s have been my perennial fave since childhood, and it’s because there’s nothing quite like the brilliance of peanut butter and chocolate together — which is why these chewy peanut butter brownies are such a good idea.

It’s easy to zero in on the chocolate and let the PB become an accessory when you’re combining these ingredients in your baking, but this recipe from Garnish with Lemon lets the peanut butter do the heavy lifting. Unlike most brownie recipes, this one doesn’t call for using baking chocolate or cocoa powder in the batter. In fact, these brownies look more like blondies.

You’ll mix together butter and peanut butter, plus brown and white sugar, eggs and flour to create the batter. These brownies get their chocolate from the chips you’ll add to the top at the end.

Blogger Lisa recommends using a spoon to mix the batter to ensure a gooey brownie consistency — using a mixer could whip it up into a more cake-like brownie, and that’s not the idea here. (As it should be. Don’t get me started on the fudgy brownies versus cake brownies controversy.)

Then again, if you’re baking brownies for the sheer decadence of the dense, chocolatey yum they provide, you might want a brownie with a more traditional batter.

Crazy for Crust has a fudgy peanut butter swirl brownie recipe that will give you the chocolate brownie base you’re craving, plus a rich peanut butter swirl on top of it all. The recipe uses blogger Dorothy’s basic brownie recipe, which calls for packing chocolate into your batter three different ways.

For these brownies, you’ll drop regular brownie batter into the bottom of the pan, then add a PB mix to the top. You’ll swirl them together before you pop the brownies into the oven.

For a big boost of peanut butter that’s well hidden in the chocolate, try the one-bowl peanut butter brownie recipe at Mel’s Kitchen Cafe. The peanut butter gets mixed right in, so it’s everywhere — and this recipe calls for a bigger dose of PB than the other recipes. You’d never know it just looking at them, though.

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to bake! Or run to the store for some Reese’s ice cream cake. Either way, I get my favorite combo.