Baking for My Life - Peanut Butter Cup Brownies

Apologies for the terrible picture quality, but apparently my camera, kitchen and life in general prevent me from taking decent pictures.

I made up my mind to bake tonight for a couple reasons. 1) I was threatened by Katie and Krissy that if I didn't post this week, I would be kicked off the blog for good. My face would be blacked out, and Atlanta would be stricken from the site. 2) One of our favorite partners is visiting from the DC office and residing on our hall for the week. Hopefully these treats will continue to endear him to us.

Due to the aforementioned reasons, I paged through one of the cookbooks I got for Christmas (which I love) and tried to find a recipe that I had most of the ingredients for. Brownies won the battle as I was only missing one egg and an ounce of chocolate. As I was making them, I remembered my last visit to NYC during Katie's first stint living there. We went to Fat Witch Brownies in some market that I can't remember the name of. They were some of the tastiest brownies I've ever had, and I spent the majority of my time crossing my fingers that these brownies would turn out even half as good. Turns out they are at least half as good. Bake these simple to make treats if you want to impress your friends with something that didn't come from a box.

Peanut Butter Cup Brownies

Adapted from How To Be A Domestic Goddess

1 2/3 cups unsalted butter, softened

13 ounces best bittersweet chocolate

6 large eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 2/3 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 bag mini peanut butter cups (you can add more depending on your taste)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 13x9 pan with foil or parchment. Melt the butter and chocolate together in a large pan. In a bowl, beat eggs, vanilla and sugar. Measure the flour into another bowl and add the salt.

When the chocolate mixture has melted, let it cool a bit before beating it into the eggs and sugar. Add flour in parts and beat until smooth. Coarse chop the mini peanut butter cups and fold into the batter. Pour into the lined pan.

Bake for about 25 minutes. When it's ready, the top should be dried to a paler brown speckle, but the middle still dark and dense and gooey. You may think they're not done yet, but they'll continue to cook as they cool. And who doesn't like brownies that might not be completely cooked? Makes a maximum of 48.