Peanut butter swirl brownies recipe

If you’ve been around my blog before, you are familiar with my unabashed love for chocolate and peanut butter. It’s my go-to combination for sweets, and I’ve even figured out to enjoy them for healthy snacks and breakfast. When I saw this recipe on Pinterest originally, I knew I had to try it…I just didn’t know it would be this good! You know, sometimes skinny recipes are okay, but they aren’t always “to die for.” Well these, oh boy, now that these are in my arsenal, look out. Look out for what? I don’t know.

Anyway, what makes these skinny is the fact that there’s no oil, butter, or flour at all. They have Greek yogurt (hello, protein!) and old fashioned oats in them. There is a good amount of sugar (well, they are brownies), but you could use Splenda, raw sugar, or some other substitute if you prefer. I don’t really care for Splenda, and I’m not supposed to have it while pregnant, so I just went with sugar. You could even take it a step further and cut calories by using egg substitute, but there’s that whole debate about using real versus substitute and which is “healthier.” Do whatever you want here; I used real eggs this time. Another beautiful thing about this recipe – you mix these up in the blender. That’s right, you just throw it all in and whiz away. How awesome is that!?

Now that you can see how excited I am about these (are you getting excited yet?) let’s go through a few more logistics so you can get baking!

The original recipe was for an 8 x 8 inch pan. Let me ask you, is an 8 x 8 inch pan of peanut butter brownies enough for you? Well it’s not for me. I knew I wanted to share these with my coworkers and have some to leave at home, so I doubled the batch and made a 9 x 13. The brownies turned out extremely fudgy, like stick to your teeth fudgy, which I love. They got rave reviews from my coworkers and husband as well. Since they are so fudgy, the original recipe said to wait a couple of hours before cutting. Hunh. I had hot, fudgy, chocolatey, peanut butter brownies fresh out of the oven, and do you think I waited a couple of hours to cut them? I waited about 14 seconds before I cut into them. I just had to try them, and oh boy are they amazing warm!

So what are you waiting for? Get baking!

Skinny Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies

Adapted from Sally’s Baking Addiction

12 oz. low fat or fat free vanilla Greek yogurt
1/2 cup skim milk
2 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 cups sugar (or substitute)
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used about 2/3 milk chocolate and 1/3 dark chocolate)
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
3/4 to 1 cup creamy peanut butter (I used Jif Reduced Fat)

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 9 x 13 pan with cooking spray and lightly dust with cocoa to prevent sticking.

Put all ingredients in blender (wet ingredients first) and blend until oats are completely ground up and everything is mixed well. Stop and scrape down the sides of the blender a couple of times to make sure everything gets incorporated. The batter will be very thin. This is ok.

Pour batter into prepared baking dish. Microwave peanut butter for 30 seconds until smooth and melted. Drizzle peanut butter over top of batter using a spoon. It can be clumpy in some spots – it shouldn’t be perfect. You can gently swirl it with a butter knife if you wish, just don’t mix it in too much.

Bake for 35-45 minutes, or until the sides of the brownies just begin to pull away from the pan. The toothpick test is difficult here because they are so fudgy. They will cut more easily if you wait until completely cooled (and even better if chilled in the fridge) before cutting. But if you can’t wait to dig in, obviously I can’t blame you.