Peanut Butter Brownie Bites

The first thing my husband said when he tasted these was, "So, are you going to blog about these?"  You bet.

These were slightly experimental, but they turned out really good.  Think Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, but brownie-style.  Yum.  And it's really pretty easy.

First of all, mix up a regular 1 lb. batch of box brownies normally.  You know the drill:  water, oil, and eggs.  After you've got your batter good and mixed up, set it aside.

Now for the peanut butter filling.  I got the idea for peanut butter filling from this fabulous cupcake recipe.  However, the cupcakes require mixing and measuring so many different things.  Batter, filling, and frosting?  Oh dear.  Anyway, it's going to be a special occasion dessert.  These brownies bites, on the other hand, are much less work.

Back to the filling.  Combine the following:
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/3 cup peanut butter
2  Tbs. butter at room temperature
1/4 tsp. vanilla

Now pull out your cupcake pans.  This recipe will make about 24 brownie bites, so two pans should do the trick.  Unless you're like me and only have one cupcake pan.  I'm sure it's even faster to make this with two pans, but I don't feel like having two at this juncture in my life.

Now, the roads can diverge here.  You can either use cupcake liners or vegetable spray the crap out of the pans so the brownies don't stick.  Your call.  I used cupcake liners.  Get out a regular table spoon (like the kind you eat with) and drop one spoonful of brownie batter into each cupcake nook.  I don't know what they're really called, but I'm going to call them nooks.

Now the filling.  Form some 1-inch balls with the filling.  Before placing a ball in each nook, squish it slightly to make a thick disk shape.  I feel like this distributes the peanut butter a little more evenly.  When you've got filling in each nook, top the nooks off with another (smaller) spoonful of batter on top.  You don't need much--mostly just cover the filling.

Now bake them at 350 degrees for 15-18 minutes.  It's a little tricky to test if they're done with the filling, but if you poke a toothpick or knife most of the way in and it comes out clean, it's probably done.  When in doubt, put it in for a minute or two longer.

There you go.  Peanut butter brownie bites.  Delish.