Recipe #37: Oreo Peanut Butter Brownies

Oreo Peanut Butter Brownies

Every once and while you talk with a friend and you know exactly what you can do for them in a moment of frustration. In this case it was, “Okay, I’m demanding that you drop the kids at my place tonight for a couple hours.” Sometimes, you just need to have a couple hours with your husband to talk, vent, cry, whatever. That is hard to do with 3 kids under the age of 7 under foot. So the kids, A., M., and E. were left to spend some quality time with Aunt Jess. Matt had already decided to go to a movie that night so it was just the 4 of us. We ate dinner, talked about foods we love and foods we hate, why hot fish is apparently the opposite of cold pizza (??), and what to do for the rest of the evening.

Me: Well, since we just decided to hang out tonight, I had something I was planning on doing before. Do you think you could help me with it?

A: What was it?

Me: Well, I have this project I am trying to do. Before Christmas-time, I want to try and make a 100 different foods!

A and M: WOW!!! That’s CRAZY!!!

E: Ababa ba babab bbab ababa kitty. (This was pretty much what I got out of him most of the night with different nouns at the end of each “sentence.”)

Me: I know! So tonight I need to work on my project, do you think you could help me make some brownies?

They for some reason did not hesitate to agree to help. By the way, I really kept trying to call them “special brownies” all night but catching myself. That’s all I need, for A and M to tell grandparents they helped me make special brownies.

Besides brownies, they voted for movie night, so we picked out a movie…A. was out voted so the Pirate Who Don’t Do Anything was our movie for the evening. Normally, when the kids watch a movie over here, it’s because the adults are hanging out, so they are used to watching TV in our bedroom. As it was just us, I put the movie on in the living room which confused them for a moment. They jumped on to the couches, they proclaimed “It’s like a REAL movie theater!!!!” I made us popcorn, but when I handed it out they said “Wow, it IS just like a real movie theater! We just need root beer!!” Not sure why… but hey, why not! “Guess what I have in the fridge?” Yep, Aunt Jess is cool like that (and it also aware that the root beer we buy is caffeine free and they were only allowed 1/2 a glass.)

Now that we were all set up, and since A lost her movie vote, so her and I headed to the kitchen (which if you have been to our place you know means she was still able to watch the movie), to make the brownies. First we lined a cupcake pan with paper liners. Then, she followed the directions on the box of brownie mix (I poured the water and oil, she told me when to stop). A finished mixing while I made the oreo peanut butter “sandwiches”. Basically, you take an Oreo, put about a teaspoon of PB on top, then another Oreo, then another teaspoon of PB and place it in one of the cupcake tins, PB side up. Once all 12 of those are done, we poured about 1/8th of a cup of the brownie batter on top. Then you bake them at 350 for about 20 minutes. When you’re done, this is what you get:

Yep, pretty much chocolate awesomness.

M took a bite of hers and her eyes about bugged out of her head. “Those are GOOD!”

The best reaction though, may have been from my bosses daughter the next day. Things have been so stressful at work that I brought some in for us to enjoy. True to Leta’s character, she took some home to her kids. I got a text message that night from her saying that her daughter had to tell me THANK YOU and they were “rhapsodic”. The next day I was told she had never seen her react to food like that. Her whole family in fact.

I will say that I think the ingredients I used did have something to do with those reactions though.

1) Ghirardelli’s Dark Chocolate Brownie Mix

2) Trader Joe’s natural creamy peanut butter (which is AMAZING PB by the way. It’s the same stuff they use in their dark chocolate PB cups.)

So I would recommend using those to make these. Overall though, we’re talking brownie, oreo, and PB… how could that EVER be bad?

So to recap, an evening at Aunt Jess’ consists of Veggie Tales, popcorn, root beer, and brownies with oreos and PB…. because that’s how I roll.