Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Blondies

My favourite moment with these blondies? The moment I introduced them at Home Group, and one of the members listened to the explanation then went, "and what's in the tin?" Um. These are a recipe from the archives of Smitten Kitchen (let's be honest, every food blogger secretly or not so secretly wants to be Deb from Smitten Kitchen) - and reading the blurb beforehand, I thoroughly agreed with Deb.

Peanut butter recipes are indeed often rather wimpy, and never quite do justice to peanut butter. The flavour does tend to be rather underwhelming.

I'm afraid, therefore, that I am somewhat disappointed with these blondies. Not that they tasted bad. Nor were they badly received. For they tasted lovely, and disappeared before I could say Jack Robinson.

They just weren't peanutty enough. And the chocolate ganache, although necessary and delicious, rather overwhelmed the attempts the peanut butter was making to shine through. I think next time I would reduce the quantity of butter and sugar, and increase the quantity of peanut butter. Or maybe use crunchy peanut butter instead of, "creamy" (smooth.) Or maybe add a few chopped peanuts.

Just something to let the peanuts say, "we're here." On the upside, The Pure Mathematician In Exile has stated he is more than willing to taste the experiments to reach the perfect peanut butter blondie!

Recipe
Slightly adapted from Smitten Kitchen who adapted it from Butterwood Desserts, West Falls, New York via Gourmet, October 2007
Makes abound 36 1+1/2 inch blondies

Blondies
 225 grams unsalted butter, softened
100 grams granulated sugar
250 grams soft brown sugar
255 grams smooth peanut butter (see notes above)
2 large eggs plus 1 large yolk
2 teaspoons (10 ml) pure vanilla extract
150 grams plain flour
100 grams self-raising flour (I like my brownies a bit more cakey, so with a little "lift," hence the addition of self-raising flour, if you like very cakey brownies, use all self-raising, if you like very fudgey brownies, use all plain flour)
200g dark chocolate chips
1/2 teaspoon table salt (Deb warns that this may not be necessary if you use regular peanut butter with added salt, but using store-brand smooth peanut butter, I initially added 1/4 tsp table salt, but it definitely needed all of the 1/2 teaspoon)
For ganache
180g dark chocolate (not the really dark 85% cocoa stuff, more like the generic eating dark chocolate stuff)
100ml double cream

1. Preheat oven to 170C. Grease and line a 13- by 9- by 2-inch baking tin. (Or, in my case a 9 by 9 inch and a 6 by 6 inch)
2. Beat together butter, peanut butter, and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Beat in whole eggs, egg yolk, and vanilla.
4. Stir in flour and chocolate chips to make a thick batter.
5. Spread batter in baking tin, smoothing top.
6. Bake until brownies are deep golden, puffed on top and a skewer inserted in centre come out with some crumbs adhering, 40 to 45 minutes.
7. Cool in the tin on a rack.
Make ganache:
1. Put dark chocolate in a heatproof bowl.
2. Bring cream to a boil in a small saucepan (or in the microwave, whilst watching like a hawk,) then pour over chocolate chips and let mixture stand for one minute.
3. Stir until completely smooth, and then spread over the blondies and leave to set before lifting out and cutting into squares.

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