Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Crunch Brownies

Lately, all my online food haunts seem to be inundated with big, brown, fudgy squares, beckoning at every click. Overdosing on all the brownie porn induced a chronic craving within me. I needed an urgent brownie fix. I even dreamed of brownies – plain, marbled, glazed, layered, filled with nuts….. But waiting, shopping for ingredients, delaying was not an option. A new jar of peanut butter in my kitchen cupboard caught my eye. Peanut Butter Crunch Brownies it would be. Chocolate and peanut butter – sweet and savoury – gooey and crunchy, nothing wrong with that. I got to work. They could be in my mouth in 30 minutes. No time to waste.  

To pair brownies with a glaze or topping, it’s important to have a go-to brownie recipe that you can to build on. Mine is Alice Medrich’s cocoa brownie. It turns out perfect little, fudgy squares every time, and since it calls for cocoa rather than chocolate, so I can bake a batch at a moment’s notice – natural cocoa is a kitchen staple but not chocolate. Ever since I found this recipe, I’ve used it as a base, for all manner of brownie-related experiments.

The original recipe calls for AP flour but I chose to go gluten-free and subbed the white flour for finger or red millet (ragi) flour. I imagine other kinds of gluten-free flours would work equally well. If you find the batter is too thick because gluten-free flours absorb more liquid, just add a couple of tablespoons of whole milk to loosen the mixture. I didn’t have to. I also  cut down the sugar from 250 g to 190 g and slightly increased the quantity of cocoa in the recipe.

As is evident from its name, this version uses crunchy peanut butter to provide that all-important bite to the fudgy, chocolaty texture of the brownie. Little nuggets of peanuts and sugar embedded in the cushiony chocolate have the power to reduce me to a sticky-fingered kindergartener. These bad babies are the perfect guilty pleasure. Share them and spread the joy, or, enjoy them alone…slowly, with a cup of coffee, or hastily, stealing them from the fridge when no one’s looking. 

Crunchy peanut butter is thick, so I mixed it with a beaten egg and some sugar to render it into a rough, crumbly dough. Once I  poured the brownie batter into the pan, all I had to do was pinch small chunks of the peanut butter dough and push them gently into the silky, molten tar of the brownie batter.  There they stay without sinking, and turn crunchy and lightly toasty while baking. If you prefer creamy peanut butter, I suggest you add a little cream or milk with the eggs and sugar, make it batter-like and swirl it into the brownie mix. I just think the crunch gives it more character. I think almond butter with a fistful of chopped, toasted almond thrown in, would work beautifully as well. Tahini, cream cheese, strawberry preserve….experiments await!