I think I may have said this before, but peanut butter is awesome – and peanut butter cookies are especially awesome. I mean, who doesn’t love those little sugar-coated peanut butter medallions criss-crossed with fork marks? For several years now I’ve been trying to make a decent peanut butter cookie bar for my annual holiday care packages, but the recipes I’ve tried haven’t been that great. Definitely not worthy of repeating. I did make some phenomenal peanut butter cookies as part of my wedding favors back in 2007, but I wasn’t sure that recipe would translate into bar form (although I really should give it a try). Then one day a lightbulb went off in my head and I started scouring the internet for peanut butter blondie recipes instead! After a long search I bookmarked three promising options, but I decided to make this one from Baking Blonde first because the output was only an 8×8″ pan rather than anything larger. These blondies are sinfully delicious. Heavy, buttery, and supremely peanut buttery. Practically perfect. Unfortunately I ran out of brown sugar and I had to substitute 1/4 c of it with granulated sugar, so I don’t know exactly how that affected the outcome. I’ll have to make these blondies again with the full 1 c of brown sugar when I’ve restocked my pantry. What a sacrifice! I would like to try making a batch without the chocolate chips (maybe with some roasted peanuts instead) because I think they might be even better without the chocolate. I have a feeling these will be perfect in my holiday care packages this year!

INGREDIENTS:
5 Tbsp butter, almost melted (I’m going to cut this back to 4 Tbsp next time)
1/2 c peanut butter (I used creamy, but crunchy would be awesome!)
3/4 c brown sugar
1/4 c sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
1 c flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 c chocolate chips (I used a semi-sweet)

DIRECTIONS:
Melt the butter in a medium microwave safe mixing bowl (about 30 seconds on high). Allow to cool for 5 mintues. Stir the peanut butter into the butter until creamy and smooth. Add the brown sugar to the butter/peanut butter and stir until smooth. Add the egg and vanilla and stir to combine. Add the flour, baking powder and salt to the peanut butter mixture and stir just to combine. Gently fold in chocolate chips. Spread batter evenly into a greased 8×8″ pan. Bake at 350 deg F for 25-30 minutes or until set in the middle (I baked mine for 28 minutes andthe edges were a little overdone). Cool pan on a wire rack before cutting. Enjoy!

Based on Baking Blonde’s Peanut Butter Blondies.