[product review & recipe] organic peanut butter brookies

A few weeks ago I got an email from Stef of Canarsie Cookies asking if she could send me some of her “brookies”. What the heck is a brookie?! It’s like a brownie and a cookie got drunk one night and had a love child that emerged and they named their baby a “brookie”. Ahh, sweet, sweet drunken love.

The Brookie:

Stef sent me some brookies to try. It’s a fusion of peanut butter and chocolate that kind of turned into a crumbly mess while being consumed. It’s not overly “OMG my teeth hurt” sweet, but rather like “I should have a cup of tea with this” kind of sweet, if that makes any sense.

They came packaged up in this super cute box!

The handmade touches really showed the extra care and effort put into making these brookies.

It’s a fun idea and a great fusion of desserts (even if I would have liked it to be a little less crumbly, but that’s only because everything goes down my shirt…).

Here’s a guest post from Stef explaining how she came up with the brookies plus a recipe on how to make them yourself! You can also sign up for more recipes on their website. For every person that signs up for their free recipes, they donate $1 to the Cystic Fibrosis foundation.

How Testing Recipes Lead To Creating A Baking Business – The Peanut Butter Explosion Brookie
by Stefanie Mysel of canarsiecookies.com

So there I was nervous as heck handing out this new recipe we were testing on my husband’s golf students. Instead of simply baking a simple cookie or brownie, I went with a little higher risk idea. Combining a peanut butter cookie with a chocolate brownie with 85% of the ingredients being organic.

Why was this risky?

Most people never had a combination of recipes, they’re used to the standard fare of Grandma’s chocolate chip cookies or brownies in a bag. But we had to test it out. I didn’t want to make the mistake of assuming something I made was that good. This was a peanut butter cookie sitting on top of a chocolate brownie. Ingredients that I found at local farmers markets and at Sprouts.

So the first golfer who bit into one wiped the crumbs from the corner of his lips and said, “Hey good freakin’ cookie…do they sell milk inside?” After the classes were over, my husband sends out thank you’s with some extra tips. The responses were uplifting and hilarious. We got comments like, “love the lessons but can you bring more of those cookie brownie thingies?” And this is how you got the recipe before you.

Overall we tested this recipe out on 249 different people over the course of three weeks. By the time we were done testing we had sold it at a coffee stand and had a request from the golf course to buy them.

The Peanut Butter Explosion Brookie

Makes 16 Brookies | Prep Time: 20 minutes | Decoration Time: 15 minutes | Baking Time: 30 minutes | Total Time: 65 Minutes

Ingredients

Brownie Part (this goes in pan first)

½ cup unsalted butter (organic)
1/3 cup unbleached all purpose flour
1 cup white granulated sugar (organic)
2 eggs (cage free organic)
¼ tsp vanilla extract
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder (organic)
¼ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt (organic rock salt)

Cookie Part

¼ cup unsalted butter (organic)
¼ cup smooth peanut butter (organic from Sprout’s)
¼ cup white granulated sugar (organic)
¼ cup packed light brown sugar (organic)
1 egg (organic)
2/3 cup unbleached all purpose flour
2/3 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt (organic)

Chocolate Glaze

1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips (organic)
1 tbl butter (organic)
1/3 tbl light corn syrup
1 tbl milk (organic)
1/8 tsp vanilla extract

Other Supplies

Cooking spray or vegetable shortening for greasing pan
Square or round cup cupcake pan

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Grease square/round cup cupcake pan on all sides.

To Prepare Brownie Batter:

Melt butter in small or medium saucepan.
Remove butter from heat and pour butter into large mixing bowl. Mix in sugar, eggs and vanilla until smooth.
Mix in flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt until well mixed.
Set batter aside.

To Prepare Cookie Dough:

Soften butter in microwave for about 20 seconds or until super soft, but not melted completely.
Cream together butter, white sugar, brown sugar, and peanut butter until smooth.
Mix in egg until smooth.
Stir in flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder.

Baking these suckers:

Fill cupcake cups about ¼ full with brownie batter.
Put cookie dough on top of brownie batter until cups are about ¾ full. You don’t want to fill cups to top because they may overflow when baked and that would be bad.
Repeat until all cupcake cups are full and batters are used.
Bake on 350 degrees F for 20 minutes or until toothpick when inserted comes out clean and cookie dough is lightly browned.
Once baked, let cool.

To prepare glaze:

In a double boiler over hot, but not boiling water, combine chocolate chips, butter, corn syrup, and milk.
Once mixture is melted and smooth, mix in vanilla.
Drizzle glaze over Brookie and let sit for a few minutes
And you’re done!