I have a list of links bookmarked on my computer that’s a mile long. Yes literally, a whole mile. That’s super long. The biggest category is labeled “recipes to try” and there are some that have been there for years. This one is one I always see when I’m scrolling through the list because it’s been there for like, 5 years. I thought I should finally make it just so I could delete it and let something else win the title of longest time on the list. Because I’m all about equal opportunity. These ooey gooey brownies have the look of a gourmet concoction, but they start off with a shortcut and are thrown together in no time. You’ll use a devil’s food cake mix (we like Duncan Hines) and turn it into a brownie. The middle layer boasts fluffy, melty marshmallow cream and dots of peanut butter morsels. Sounds like a winning combination, right?? It totally is.
Start by mixing part of the sweetened condensed milk with the cake mix, butter, milk, and egg white. It doesn’t look like a cake batter, it’s super thick like this:
You’ll need to pat part of this mixture into a 9×13 inch pan. You can either flour your hands, or spray them with cooking spray to avoid big goopy chocolate hands. That layer gets popped in the oven for about 10 minutes.
While it gets baked up, grab the marshmallow cream and scoop it all out into a bowl.
Add the rest of the sweetened condensed milk and stir it up till it’s nice and smooth
Lovely, isn’t it?
Then, we add peanut butter chips. Mmmm…peanut butter chips.
What a beautiful invention.
You can certainly measure them out. Or you can dump them in and accidentally dump way more than the recipe calls for. I won’t tell.
Stir them in
Then pour the marshmallow mixture over your pre-cooked brownie mixture. The marshmallow mixture is nice and sticky so just be patient and spoon it on a little at a time and very gently spread it around.
Then take the rest of that brownie dough and use your fingers to sort of smoosh it out into flat pieces and lay them on top.
Ready for the oven! Bake for another 30 minutes and wa-lah…
(And if you’re about to send me a rude grammar-correcting email or comment, I will just tell you now that I already know that’s not the correct spelling of wa-lah and I’m using it anyway. Because it’s my blog and I feel like it. And I don’t like writing in French because people won’t pronounce it wa-lah in their heads they will say viola.
And that just sounds lame. Seriously. Stop the emails. I’m sure you have better things you could do with your time. Like make brownies!)
It will kill you to not cut into these right away, but trust me, they are much better after they’ve cooled down. You can leave them slightly warm, or cool them completely to really taste all of the flavors. They’re awesome in big squares with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top too.
Or just stuffed in your face. Your call.
A few of you readers in the comments were surprised to note the source of such a naughty looking recipe: Cooking Light Magazine! I noted that the great thing about Cooking Light is that they skim calories where they can, but without sacrificing the recipe. So while these brownies are totally drool-worthy, they use non-fat milk and non-fat sweetened condensed milk, only 1 egg white in the whole recipe and only 4 tablespoons butter. All things considered, that’s a pretty great line-up for a treat as decadent as this! So go ahead; eat one more 😉
Ooey-Gooey Peanut-Butter Brownies
Ingredients
- 3/4 C sweetened condensed milk divided (fat-free is fine)
- 1/4 C butter melted and cooled (1/2 stick)
- 1/4 C non-fat milk
- 1 box devil's food cake mix 18.25 oz
- 1 large egg white lightly beaten
- cooking spray
- 1 7 oz jar marshmallow creme about 1 3/4 C
- 1/2 C peanut butter morsels not gonna lie, I used a very "heaping" 1/2 cup :
Instructions
- With an electric mixer, combine 1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk, milk, butter, cake mix, and egg white. Mixture will be very thick. Spray 9x13 pan with cooking spray. Press 2/3 of the mixture into the bottom of the pan. Use either floured hands, or spray your hands with cooking spray in order to press it down without having it stick to your fingers. The layer will be thin. Bake for 10 minutes.
- Combine 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk and marshmallow creme in a bowl and combine until smooth. Stir in PB morsels. No one will tell if you stir in some extras.
- Spread marshmallow layer over brownie layer in pan. Carefully drop remaining brownie batter by spoonfuls over marshmallow mixture. Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes. (The original recipe calls for 30 minutes, but many readers have noted that 20 minutes was perfect, and I usually only bake for about 20-25). Remove from oven and cool before cutting into squares.
Questions & Reviews
These are great. Just made some to try out. My boys loved them and they thought smooshing the pieces for the top was great fun! Thanks for all the great recipes.
OMG i am like DROOLING!
My daughter showed me this recipe on her computer, so I now have your blog bookmarked on my computer. My daughter is coming over to my home next week to bake up a batch of these bad boys!! I will report how it went as soon as I come out of my food coma!
Looks amazing! Do you think it would be good with regular or german choc cake mix? OR is Devils food the way to go?! 🙂
I imagine it would work, but I’ve never tried it so I’m not sure!
Yumm, yumm, yumm. I just whipped these up but because I knew one of the people eating them has some allergies I replaced the peanut butter chips with butterscotch chips. Delicious!
Just made these with my husband for a Friday night treat. He’s allergic to peanuts, so we substituted almond butter and they turned out AMAZING. He’s already requested them next week for Father’s Day! Thanks for this wonderful blog!!!
I’m wanting to make these so bad, but I’m suffering from the “diet status” right now, so I wanted to see just how much damage these would cause (especially since I noticed what you mentioned about the ingredients being relatively diet-friendly). I plugged the ingredients into the recipe calculator on the livingstrong website, and if you slice the pan up into 15 brownies they end up being about 273 calories each. Check it out: http://www.livestrong.com/recipes/ooey-gooey-peanut-butter-brownies/
Also, I only just discovered this tool on that website. It was really easy to plug in all the ingredients and it does all the work of calculating everything for you! I’m going to be using this all the time now! (Or at least until I start noticing how horrible all of my favorite recipes are for my wasteline. lol)
Lauren,
You can find all of the nutritional information on the original recipe:
http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/ooey-gooey-peanut-butter-chocolate-brownies-10000000223214/
They are by no means, “diet food” (hello, they’re brownies! lol) but they are absolutely a skimmed version of a very decadent treat. A regular brownie with all of these same add-ins would probably be close to double the calorie count, and that’s the point! I count calories too, and I will gladly factor in that many for a dessert 🙂
Oh nice! Wow, they say you get two dozen out of that recipe. I only accounted for 15. Still an awesome count considering they’re DELICIOUS BROWNIES. lol
i’m making these now, and my marshmallow mixture with the condensed milk is way too runny…help!
never mind…used evaporated milk instead 🙁
HOLY crap these look sooooooooooooooooooooooo good!! Lucky for me I popped on here before finishing my shopping list, heehee. Can anyone guess what’s for dessert this weekend? And PS- I like your “wa-lah”, much better than the french version 🙂
We made these tonight and the only substitution I made was to use mint chips instead of peanut butter (we were out!). I was so bummed cause they didn’t turn out nearly as well as your version! I think my problem was my marshmallow cream. I used the generic Walmart version and it practically melted into a hard carmel…there is no resemblance to marshmallow after baking it. Anyone else have this problem? I will have to try it again in a few weeks with some of the good stuff!
I didn’t have the pb chips so made them without, but I also had the problem with the marshammlow cream turning into a carmel-like stuff. They were still good, but the top looked really dry.