Peanut Butter Pretzel Brownies

I feel like I've made these before, but I haven't.  Luckily, I have this blog so that I can look back over my baking adventures and see if I've made something before.  Evidence has proven that I've never made Peanut Butter Pretzel Brownies.  I have, however, made two versions of Peanut Butter, Pretzel, Marshmallow Brownies.  That's still a little too close for my taste, but when you've got a bunch of chocolate, pretzels and peanuts lying around this sort of thing tends to happen.

Before we talk about brownies, can we talk about how easy it is to make peanut butter?

All you have to do is blend up peanuts in the food processor.  First you end up with chopped peanuts, then ground peanuts, then slightly sticky ground peanuts, but if you keep going and going you get smooth peanut butter.  It doesn't taste exactly like your regular old Skippy or Jiff but it definitely tastes like those natural peanut butters.  I used raw, unsalted peanuts, so I added some salt to it to make it tastier but use whatever peanuts you have lying around and then add salt at the end once you figure out if it's any good.  This also works with other nuts... almonds, cashews, sunflower seeds, etc.  I'm tempted to take all the nuts out of my pantry and grind them all up together to create the most kumbaya version of nut butter you've ever seen.

To make these brownies you basically make 2 batters - a regular brownie and then a peanut butter batter.

The peanut butter gets sandwiched in between the brownie batter.  Top the whole thing up with barely crushed up pretzels.  I used 3 cups of pretzels because that was what I had - but they didn't all stick very well to the top so you can reduce that if you want to.  What I HIGHLY recommend doing is to put all of the pretzel salt that has fallen to the bottom of the bag on top of the brownies.  If there isn't any (which would be weird) you should sprinkle a little extra course salt on top.  It definitely adds to the whole "salty-sweet" thing which is what makes these brownies so good.

These are definitely in the cake brownie camp, not the fudgey brownie camp.  I prefer my brownies fudgey but I still really enjoyed these.  They're sweet and a little bit chewy and have the perfect combination of sweet and salty.

Peanut Butter Pretzel Brownies
Adapted from Brownies To Die For

Ingredients

For the Brownies
4 oz Unsweetened Chocolate
2/3 cup Butter
1 cup Sugar
1 cup Brown Sugar
4 Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 1/4 cup Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Salt
6 oz. Dark Chocolate Chips

For the Peanut Butter Swirl
3/4 cup Peanut Butter (crunchy or creamy)
1/3 cup Butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
3 T Flour
1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 T Milk
2 Eggs

3 cups Pretzels, slightly crushed
Salt at the bottom of the pretzel bag (or 1/2 - 1 tsp Course Salt)

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.   Line a 9"x13" pan with parchment paper.  Spray the parchment paper with non-stick spray.

In a medium saucepan, melt the unsweetened chocolate and butter over medium heat.  Remove from the pot from the heat.  Stir in the sugar, brown sugar, eggs and vanilla.  Add the flour, baking powder and salt and stir until combined.  Let cool for 10 minutes and then mix in the chocolate chips.

In a medium bowl mix together the peanut butter and butter until completely smooth.  Add the brown sugar and flour and mix until combined.  Add the vanilla, milk and eggs and mix until combined.

Add half of the brownie mixture to the prepared pan and spread it evenly.  Drop all of the peanut butter mixture on top of the brownie mixture and spread as much as you can to cover the base layer of brownie batter.  Top that with the remaining brownie mixture and spread as evenly as possible.  Use a knife to swirl the batter in the pan so that you can see bits of both the brownie and peanut butter batters.  Sprinkle the crushed pretzels and salt on top and press them down lightly so they adhere to the batter.

Bake for 45 minutes.  Cool completely, remove from the pan and cut into squares.

Enjoy!
Julie