chocolate peanut butter butterfinger brownies.

This is my take on this brownie that went viral some time ago. I used a chewy brownie recipe and instead of peanut butter cups and salted peanuts, I had them replaced with chopped butterfinger bars. To add to the peanut butter flavour, I made a peanut butter filling to be spread on top of the cooled brownies before sprinkling on the butterfingers. I kept the rice krispie layer the same.

I had full intention to follow the original recipe because it looked too perfect to be modified in any way but I had no reese's peanut butter cups conveniently lying around (even if I did, they wouldn't last long enough to make it into the bars). What I did have though, were butterfingers. So I made the switch. I knew butterfinger bars were not as packed full of peanut butter oomph as reese peanut butter cups, so I added an extra layer of peanut butter filling, inspiration from here, to make sure that these chocolate peanut butter butterfinger brownies held to its name.

The peanut butter filling is almost the same consistency of reese's peanut butter cups', maybe just a bit moister. It is a good thing because the peanut butter wouldn't ooze everywhere when sitting at room temperature, but it made spreading it on top of the brownies difficult.

It's hard to go wrong with chocolate and peanut butter and crunch but if I had to nitpick, I would throw in more rice krispies for extra crunch. Because it's a 50-50 mix of chocolate and peanut butter, you can expect the topping to remain rather soft and sliceable even when throughly chilled and for it to melt extremely quickly in less-than-cool temperatures. So eat fast, or cut them into small bars and keep going back to the fridge!

I used a chewy brownie recipe for the base and I would probably recommend using a fudgy brownie one. At room temperature, the brownies were all lovely, gooey and moist but because this brownie is meant to be refrigerated, the brownies lose their characteristic texture and slides into second place behind brownies of a fudgy nature. Besides, fudgy brownies benefit from chilling.

I actually made something of a similar before I started blogging. They were called peanut butter fudge crunch bars which I made from Cookie Madness. Those were awesome. If you couldn't care less about the brownie layer and just want crunch, crunch and more crunch, make those. As an added bonus, they are no-bake.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Butterfinger Brownies

For the brownie layer, make a 9 x 13 inch pan's worth of brownies with your favourite brownie recipe or use this chewy brownie recipe like I did

For the peanut butter filling:
1 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups icing sugar

Cream the peanut butter, butter and salt together until well combined. Add in the icing sugar and mix until incorporated.

For the chocolate peanut butter topping:
1 1/2 cups milk chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups peanut butter
1/2 tbsp butter
1 1/2 cups rice krispie cereal (I would use 2 cups and maybe a bit more)

Melt the chocolate chips. Stir in the peanut butter and butter until evenly combined. Stir in the rice krispies. Set the mixture aside to cool slightly.

Assembly:
chopped butterfinger bars, as much as needed

Bake the brownies and let them cool completely. Spread the peanut butter filling evenly over the brownies and layer on the chopped butterfinger bars. Try to lay the chopped pieces of candy bars as close to the surface as possible so that they don't jut out of the topping later on. Pour over the chocolate peanut butter topping and refrigerate until firm before slicing, about 2 hours.