Experiment Brownies

I was milling about the house with a little more than an hour before Jeff was supposed to be home, and the urge to bake something hit me. So I grabbed my Hershey's cookbook that I'd hardly ever used (though everything in it looks marvelous) and looked for something that only required ingredients I had in the house.

Instead I settled for some rocky road brownies that mostly used things I had (except marshmallows...) and I opted to use peanut butter chips in their place, because I did have those. I had a jar of tiny dried marshmallows that we throw on ice cream, so I added a bunch of those to the batter, but in the end they melted in and we couldn't detect them. I think the recipe is fine without them.

Of course the result was amazing, because it was brownies with peanut butter chips. We ate the first of them while they were still warm so the chocolate topping was still gooey. That was amazing, but they were also still wonderful after the topping had hardened. They stayed soft for a while, and I am attributing that to the hardened chocolate on top keeping all the goodness inside.

Recipe (mostly from Hershey's cookbook until you get to the peanut butter chips instead of marshmallows... plus you're supposed to put nuts in them)

Ingredients:

-1/2 Cup (1 stick) butter

1 Cup sugar

2 Eggs

1 tsp Vanilla extract

1/2 Cup all-purpose flour

1/3 Cup cocoa powder

1/2 tsp Baking powder

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips (recipe calls for 1 cup)

1/2 cup peanut butter chips (not in original recipe)

1 1/4 cup mini marshmallows (I did not have these)

1/2 cup chopped nuts (I didn't use these either)

Directions:

-Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 9" square baking pan

-Stir together any baking chips, marshmallows, and/or nuts you are using and set aside. Place butter in microwave safe bowl. Microwave on Medium 1 to 1 1/2 minutes or until melted. Add sugar, eggs, and vanilla, beating with spoon until well blended. Add flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt; blend well. Spread batter in prepared pan

-Bake 22 minutes. Sprinkle chocolate chip mixture over top. Continue baking 5 minutes or until marshmallows have softened and puffed slightly. I think 5 minutes was too much for mine because my chips seemed a little scorched in some areas. I think 4 would have been plenty

-Remove from oven and use spatula or back of wooden spoon to spread/smear chip topping (if you didn't use marshmallows or nuts at all). Cool completely. Cut into squares with wet knife