Okay, I seem to be on roll at the moment with recipes that really aren’t Toot Hansell Women’s Institute-type recipes, and these peanut butter and jam blondies are no exception.
They are, however, ridiculously good and pretty much as easy as it’s possible to be and still call itself a recipe.
Peanut butter and jam (or jelly) always feels like such a uniquely American thing to me. An American friend introduced me to that particular combo when I was a wee small thing, and I do quite like a bit of crunchy peanut butter and nice seeded jam on toasted rye bread. It’s indulgent and tasty, but it’s not something I can’t live without (unlike NZ Marmite). Also, jelly? No. You have actual jelly in trifles. That’s just jam with the nice bits taken out.
Not a fan of it on white bread, but yes.
Peanut butter and jam blondies, though … *drools*
These I shall be making again, although I have to admit that I mainly made them because I wanted brownies and didn’t have any chocolate. Plus, my main excuse for baking while the SO is away is that it’s for the blog, and I have already done a brownie recipe (which is truly excellent, if I do say so myself. And I do).
Mmm. Swirly jam.
And now I’ll get out of the way, except to say that I see no reason why this wouldn’t work with other nut butter, if peanut butter is a no-go for you. And also to remind you that if you need more peanut butter, you can grab my cookie recipe here.
So happy baking – and let me know below if you’re going to give it a go, or if you have other peanut butter recipes you love!
Gloriously Gooey Peanut Butter & Jam Blondies
160g flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
115g butter, melted and cooled
2 eggs
260g light brown sugar (I know. Shh. It’s okay.)
190g crunchy peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla
Jam (lots or little to taste)
Pre-heat oven to 180C, and line a square tin with greaseproof paper (you can also pop a metal or pyrex bowl with the butter in it into the oven while it heats – it melts nicely, and no need to deal with buttery microwave explosions, which always seems to happen to me …)
Combine dry ingredients.
Add eggs, sugar, peanut butter and vanilla to butter (make sure it’s cooled, otherwise you get nice bits of scrambled egg all through your blondies. Speaking from prior experience here …). Whisk until just combined.
Add dry ingredients. Fold in until just combined – it forms a pretty thick batter, almost like cookie mix.
Spread in prepared pan, then dollop teaspoons of jam all over the top. Use a knife to swirl the jam through the batter, creating a marble effect and making sure not to mix it in too much.
Bake until a knife inserted in the centre comes out with just a few gooey bit on it.
Cool. Eat. Eat more. YES.
Now will someone please tell me why this is a thing and why it has grape jelly in it?? Also, goober … Does that mean something different in the US …?
Photo from Smucker’s
blondies, brownies, jam, jelly, pb&j, peanut butter, recipes
I love hearing a non-American’s thoughts on PBJs. I’m a jam fan myself, having grown up with only jelly and not realizing until I was an adult (as you put it so well) that all the best bits were missing. And grape jelly is probably the most common one over here, I suppose. At least finding multiple flavors of jam and preserves isn’t such a difficult thing anymore—I can find my favorite black raspberry jam on the shelves almost anywhere, which is a good thing because I eat our black raspberries by the fistful when they’re ripe and can never seem to spare any for throwing in jam.
For what it’s worth, I always thought that Goober stuff was disgusting, both in concept and taste. Smucker’s is a popular brand of jam over here, and its name is amusing (it’s a family name, apparently) but goober still means goober all around the world, and I could never figure out why they called it that. They (or another brand) also tried chocolate and peanut butter striped stuff for a brief time, and for as much as I love chocolate, I thought that was appalling as well.
Ooh, raspberry jam is my favourite! I used to buy nothing but blackcurrant, but for some reason I veered off a few years ago and have stuck to raspberry ever since. Grape jelly is something I have not tried – I can’t imagine it. I do like grapes, but that just seems a bit odd for some reason.
A lovely newsletter reader has informed me that she grew up in the town that the Smucker’s plant is in (I like that part of the name, too!), and apparently it’s called Goober because peanuts were once known as Goober peas. Which is a wonderful bit of trivia I had no idea about! Now I’m wondering how the other connotations of goober arrived …
I could be tempted by chocolate and peanut butter. But probably not on bread. It’s like nutella – glorious stuff, but having it on toast never seems quite right to me.