Decadent Peanut Butter Cup Brownies

Today's my birthday. I won't tell you how old I am, that will just depress me. Instead, I'll pretend I'm still 25 and we'll all be happier.

Last week was my vacation, I took a week off from work to spend time with my brother and his family who were visiting from Illinois. We celebrated my birthday on Friday. Since it was my birthday, my father and my niece picked out a great cake from an Amish bakery. I was just happy I wasn't expected to bake my own birthday cake.

Knowing my love of Trader Joe's, my sister-in-law brought me a bag full of baking supplies from TJ's. They also got me the Star Wars Cupcake Stencils from Williams Sonoma, but that's for another post.

One of the items they brought were the wonderful Trader Joe's mini Peanut Butter Cups that I used in a previous post Trader Joe's and Peanut Butter Cup Brownies.



Unfortunately, chocolate peanut butter cups can't handle car rides half way across the country in July heat.



But we weren't going to give up on them. We tossed around ideas like chopping them up and using it as an ice cream topping. But, being me, I wanted to find a use for them in baking.

A couple weeks ago, I came up with Gooey Rolo Brownies and they ended up being very delicious and quite popular. So I decided to tweak the recipe a bit and create these Decadent Peanut Butter Cup brownies.

I used the same base brownie recipe from Hersheykitchen.com: Sensational Peppermint Pattie Brownies.

Instead of the Peppermint Patties, I used regular sized Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to layer in the middle of the brownies.



I wanted to use the regular PB cups because they're thinner and wider than the minis and I wanted to use them to cover more ground. It took 24 PB cups to create the middle layer.



I spread the rest of the batter on top of the peanut butter cups and baked the brownies for about 50 minutes.



While the brownies were baking, I took a fork to the melted mini peanut butter cups and broke them up into chunks.



I took the brownies out of the oven and sprinkled the mini PB cups all over the top and put them back into the oven for about 4 minutes.



The candy was melty and soft when I took them out.



I used an offset spatula to spread the melted PB cups all over the top.



These brownies were moist and had just the right amount of peanut butter to chocolate ratio.



I discovered that both the Gooey Rolo Brownies and the Decadent Peanut Butter Cup Brownies are even better the next day.

Gooey Rolo Brownies

I seem to be on a bit of a chocolate caramel kick at the moment. While working on the Chocolate Caramel Cookie Cups, I came up with the idea to do Rolo brownies.

Years ago, I made brownies with peppermint patties in the middle. I knew that was the recipe I wanted to tweak, so I did a little online searching and found Hershey's Sensational Peppermint Pattie Brownies. The brownies in this recipe are rich and dense, perfect for supporting the candy in the middle.

I gathered the ingredients, the only changes I made were replacing the peppermint patties with Rolos and using some homemade caramel sauce as a drizzle on top.



The brownies whipped up quickly. I poured half the batter into the 9x13x2 inch pan and then layered the Rolos. I lined them up, alternating right side up and upside down to get as many in as I could. I used two 12oz bags of Rolos with about 8 leftover.



I didn't go all the way to the edges with the candy because I wanted the brownies to fill in around the edges and keep the candy on the inside only.



I poured the rest of the batter on top and carefully spread it, trying to not move the Rolos around too much.



I baked them for 50 minutes. The recipe calls for 50-55 minutes, I always bake brownies a little less so they're soft and a bit fudgy.



There was homemade caramel left over from my last baking experiment and I heated it up until it was the right consistency. Then, using a fork, I drizzled the caramel over the brownies.



I thought that I was done, when I saw the last few Rolos left over. I came up with the idea of taking each candy and cutting it in 6 pieces.



While the brownies were still hot, I sprinkled the pieces of Rolo all over the top.



Because the brownies were hot, the candy melted a bit more into little rivers of caramel oozing out of the chocolate.



These amazing brownies came out as gooey, chocolatey, caramely bites of awesomeness!

I am now trying to come up with more recipes using Rolos. They melted beautifully and the possibilities are endless.