I love baked goods precision, which is why I use scoops to portion my cookies, a ruler to measure my bars, pastry rulers to roll out dough, and an Agbay to level my cakes. It's also why I was drawn to Edd Kimber's recipe for Peanut Butter Brookies. The photo in the cookbook (the same photo you can see here along with the recipe) is a close-up of two-tone bars with a perfectly straight line demarcating the peanut butter cookie base from the brownie layer on top. I've make cookie-brownie hybrids before (Brooksters from Baked Elements and Abby Dodge's Chocolate-Chip Brownie Double-Deckers), but both times the result was not nearly as tidy. And both of those recipes cross a chocolate chip cookie with a brownie, so I had never tried a peanut butter cookie version before.
The recipe is relatively simple. First, you make the peanut butter cookie base by mixing creamy peanut butter with brown sugar; adding an egg and egg yolks; and incorporating flour, baking soda, salt, and chopped salted peanuts. You press the mixture into the bottom of a parchment-lined pan. For the brownie layer, you beat sugar, brown sugar, eggs, salt, and vanilla until thick and pale; add a mixture of butter melted with cocoa powder; and fold in flour. You spread the brownie batter over the peanut butter cookie layer, sprinkle more peanuts on top, and bake.
I thought these bars and their neat layers were so aesthetically pleasing. And they tasted good, too -- basically just like a chocolate-peanut butter cookie in bar form. The textures of the two layers were nearly identical, such that if you took a bite with your eyes closed, you would think you were just eating a chocolate-peanut butter cookie. The chopped peanuts added some nice crunch.
Comparing these to previous cookie-brownie hybrids I've baked, I think that there are both advantages and disadvantages to making the cookie component a peanut butter batter instead of a chocolate chip batter. On the plus side, the soft texture of a peanut butter cookie blends in seamlessly with the brownie, making the final product seem more like an integrated whole. On the other hand, the fact that the two layers blend in so well might defeat the purpose of making a dessert with two distinct layers to begin with -- unless you care most about the visual impact.
By contrast, one of the reasons that I'm generally disappointed in chocolate chip brookies is that they seem like two different desserts just pasted together. For me, the texture of a chocolate chip cookie -- ideally crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside -- is so important to its overall enjoyment, and pasting a cookie on top of a softer brownie sort of detracts from the cookie-ness of the cookie component.
So I do think that the peanut butter cookie-brownie pairing works better as a brookie than a combination of a chocolate chip and brownie. Even though the end result might taste the same as a chocolate-peanut butter cookie, it would probably take less time to mix and bake a pan of these bars than it would to bake a batch of cookies. And you get the dramatically-striped bars to boot! I'm a fan.
Recipe: "Peanut Butter Brookies" from One Tin Bakes by Edd Kimber, recipe available here at epicurious.com.
Previous Posts:
The recipe is relatively simple. First, you make the peanut butter cookie base by mixing creamy peanut butter with brown sugar; adding an egg and egg yolks; and incorporating flour, baking soda, salt, and chopped salted peanuts. You press the mixture into the bottom of a parchment-lined pan. For the brownie layer, you beat sugar, brown sugar, eggs, salt, and vanilla until thick and pale; add a mixture of butter melted with cocoa powder; and fold in flour. You spread the brownie batter over the peanut butter cookie layer, sprinkle more peanuts on top, and bake.
Comparing these to previous cookie-brownie hybrids I've baked, I think that there are both advantages and disadvantages to making the cookie component a peanut butter batter instead of a chocolate chip batter. On the plus side, the soft texture of a peanut butter cookie blends in seamlessly with the brownie, making the final product seem more like an integrated whole. On the other hand, the fact that the two layers blend in so well might defeat the purpose of making a dessert with two distinct layers to begin with -- unless you care most about the visual impact.
By contrast, one of the reasons that I'm generally disappointed in chocolate chip brookies is that they seem like two different desserts just pasted together. For me, the texture of a chocolate chip cookie -- ideally crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside -- is so important to its overall enjoyment, and pasting a cookie on top of a softer brownie sort of detracts from the cookie-ness of the cookie component.
So I do think that the peanut butter cookie-brownie pairing works better as a brookie than a combination of a chocolate chip and brownie. Even though the end result might taste the same as a chocolate-peanut butter cookie, it would probably take less time to mix and bake a pan of these bars than it would to bake a batch of cookies. And you get the dramatically-striped bars to boot! I'm a fan.
Recipe: "Peanut Butter Brookies" from One Tin Bakes by Edd Kimber, recipe available here at epicurious.com.
Previous Posts:
- "Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun?: Chocolate-Chip Brownie Double-Deckers," April 11, 2017.
- "Baked Sunday Mornings: Brooksters," September 16, 2012.
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