Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies

Since I did not feel like overloading the blog with so many entries in one day, I decided to wait until today to introduce quite possibly my new favorite dessert. I know that even thus far in my blogging, anyone who reads this will find that hard to believe, because I love all dessert. :) The bad thing about dessert in this "family" is that Josh does not like sweets (I know, he is WEIRD!)...he even HATES cake! I mean, seriously...who hates cake? That's completely un-American or something...but alas, when I make a dessert it is dangerous because he will not eat it and that means I have a whole entire dessert to myself. Not good. I try to give them away but truly, everyone always pulls that, "oh I'll take one" or "I'll take a small piece." REALLY?!? Take more!!!

Blah...even though I may get incredibly fat, I still love baking so here is my newest addition to my sweet-tooth catelog.

Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies

Ingredients:

1 pkg cream cheese, softened (you only need like 4 oz of it so half of a normal brick works)

1/2 C peanut butter

1/2 C white sugar

1 egg

1 box brownie mix (approx 19 oz, whatever kind you want)

2 T water

1/2 C vegetable oil

2 eggs

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease bottom and sides of 9x13 baking dish. (Glass works best)

2. In a small bowl, blend cream cheese, peanut butter, sugar and one egg. Beat until smooth. Set aside.

3. In a separate bowl, blend together brownie mix, water, oil and eggs. Stir 50 strokes or until all brownie mix is well incorporated. It is okay to have some lumps.

4. Spread about half of the brownie batter into the greased pan. Drop peanut butter mixture by spoonfuls over the top of the brownie mix. Take the remaining brownie batter and spoon that over your mounds of peanut butter.

My peanut butter blobs :)

5. After you have spooned the remaining brownie batter over the peanut butter, take a butter knife and run it through the pan, first vertically than horizontally. This will create the pretty marbled effect you're going for:

    

Pretty!

6. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Cool completely, cut into bars and store tightly covered in the refrigerator (because of the cream cheese.) Enjoy!

The finished product!

We really liked these brownies because I followed the tips of some other bakers on allrecipes.com. The recipe I included was the one I created out of the one on the website. You can use more cream cheese, but be sure to adjust the peanut butter and the sugar accordingly otherwise, you can apparently end up with some funky tasting brownies. Other bakers reccommended using crunchy peanut butter or throwing a handful of peanuts into the mix...the great thing about this recipe is that its versatile, you can do whatever you want! And they turn out so pretty.