Do yourself a favor...make these brownies.

I was on a quest Sunday afternoon to find a brownie recipe online that would taste something like the boxed brownies that I love so much. Have you ever noticed how most homemade brownie recipes just are not as good as the boxed mixes? I have found this to be true. I also had to find a recipe that called for ingredients that I already had on hand because I was not going to get dressed to run to the store looking for something called oleo or buying a tub of Crisco for just one pan of brownies. What is oleo anyway?

During my search I came across a recipe for peanut butter brownies and something inside of me just knew that I needed to try it. You need to try it too.Here's what you need:
1/2 C peanut butter
1/3 C margarine, softened
2/3 C white sugar
1/2 C brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 t vanilla
1 C flour
1 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.Cream the margarine and peanut butter together. Add the brown sugar and white sugars and mix well. Resist the temptation to stick your finger in there and taste some. Or not. Just do this before you add the eggs and continue to mix well.After you measure out the flour, add the salt and baking powder to it before pouring it into the butter mixture and mix it all up.Now you can go ahead and add it to the pan at this point, but I happened to have a bag of already opened semi-sweet chocolate chips in my refrigerator so I grabbed a handful and threw them in. If you were a nut person, you could add a handful of nuts at this point. I am not a nut person so I didn't do that. But I won't judge you if you do. Oh! You could also add those little mini M&Ms that you can buy for baking...or peanut butter morsels...oh the possibilities. Spread the batter in a pan. The recipe called for a 9x9 pan, but I don't own a 9x9 pan, so I used my 8x8. This made for really thick brownies but that was perfectly ok by me. You would definitely need to double the recipe if you wanted to use a 9x13 pan. I baked them for about 33 minutes when it was all said and done. I hate over-cooked brownies, so I started my timer at 27 minutes, and they were still slightly jiggly, so I added a few minutes here and there until I reached a total baking time of about 33 minutes. My oven is old and the temperature thing isn't accurate, so be careful with your baking time. They had a hint of a golden color to them around the edges. You can't unbake them, but you can always bake longer.Oh. My. Word.Utopia. The chocolate chips were a nice addition. I love peanut butter and chocolate together. I also think that covering these in a chocolate icing of some kind would be a fabulous idea, but I didn't do that with my batch.