Banana Peanut Butter Brownies
August 27: National Banana Lovers Day
During quarantine, online searches for “banana bread recipes” have spiked (which is way better than the number of coronavirus cases spiking). It seems that homebound people did not want to be wasteful of their limited groceries, had more time to spend in their kitchens and wanted to eat comfort food during the uncertainties in life. Having “been there, baked that” banana bread several times, we wanted to make something else with our blackening bananas.
Since we had peanut butter and cocoa powder in our pantry already, banana peanut butter brownies recipe was an easy choice to bake up besides banana bread. So if there are overripe bananas, bake banana peanut butter brownies while homebound and on National Banana Lovers Day.
Recipe
(Adapted from Tasty)
Ingredients
- 2 overripe bananas
- ½ cup (1 stick) butter, unsalted, room temperature
- 1 cup sugar (we used a little less)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¾ cup flour
- ¼ cup cocoa powder
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- ½ cup peanut butter
Directions
In a mixing bowl, mash the bananas. Add the butter, sugar and vanilla. Cream everything together.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cocoa powder and salt. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ones and mix until the batter is smooth. Line an 8×8-inch square baking pan with foil/waxed paper/parchment paper, leaving a little overhang on the sides to be able to pull up the brownies after baking. Mist with cooking spray or grease with butter. Pour batter and spread evenly over the prepared pan.
Scoop out the peanut butter in random places on top. Use a butter knife to swirl the peanut butter. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees F for 25-30 minutes. Remove from the oven and wait about 5-10 minutes before lifting the foil/waxed paper/parchment paper side handles and transferring to a wire rack. Cut into squares when completely cool. Yield: 16 brownies (or 9 large brownies).
Notes
- This is a versatile recipe. Add half a cup of walnuts, chocolate chips or peanut butter chips to the batter before baking.
- This is an eggless recipe so the brownies bake up more cake-like than packed and dense. Eggs were a precious find at the grocery stores during quarantine—just like toilet paper, hand sanitizer, yeast and flour (in our area).
- Search our blog for other banana recipes.
HI COOKERY 