The peanut brownies I never had
Why are these called The Peanut Brownies We Never Had? Because we still have some bad attitudes toward the 1970’s baking of New Zealand. And yes, before the, er, Peanut Gallery goes, um, nuts, we do know that there were some, uh, gems from that era. And geeze, aren’t the puns free-flowing today! But peanut brownies? We remember these as claggy, fugly and chocolate-deficient. They tasted like gloom and disappointment. We don’t know where they came from but hopefully they have crawled their sorry arses back.
Ditto the Afghan. Did you realise there’s a theory that these originated as troop rations during the Second Afghan War? We did not know this but now we do, it makes perfect sense. You’d need to be in a state of heightened adrenal agitation and VERY distracted to actually enjoy these; tell us we are wrong. They taste like someone forgot the sugar, or couldn’t afford any. That slick of icing and sad, lone walnut on the top feel like compensation for how average the rest of the eating experience is. Maybe all this was down to our mum’s baking, we don’t know.
THESE, however, are All The Things peanut brownies never were. They’re crispy-chewy, choc-ful of cocoa AND dark chocolate, have rich little peanut butter chips through them and salted peanuts too. They're overloaded, generous and decadent. They’re overall damned sensational, if we say so ourselves. And like most cookies, not hard to make. One observation though is that the dough is pretty firm and all those bits can be hard to work in. So make like a proctologist and put on disposable gloves, then get right in with your hands and work all those bitty bastards through. Easy. And it’s fun to taunt the males in your house with those gloves as they snap menacingly over wrists. Give it a try!
MAKES 24
185g (1¼ cups) plain flour
75g (⅔ cup) cocoa powder
¾ tsp baking soda
225g unsalted butter, softened
150g (⅔ cup) caster sugar
150g (⅔ cup, firmly packed) brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 cup roasted, salted peanuts
160g (1 cup) Reese’s peanut butter chips, plus extra, for sprinkling
125g dark chocolate, chopped
Sift together the flour, cocoa and baking soda into a bowl, then set aside. Using electric beaters, beat the butter, sugars and vanilla extract until light and fluffy. Add the egg, beat well, then add the egg yolk and beat well.
Using a large, metal spoon, stir in the dry ingredients. Add the salted peanuts, peanut butter chips and chopped chocolate, then stir to mix well. Form heaped tablespoonfuls of the mixture into balls, place them on the lined trays and flatten to form rounds roughly 8cm across. Leaving space between each for spreading. Sprinkle a few extra peanut butter chips over each, pressing them in lightly so they stick.
Bake the biscuits for 10-12 minutes or until firm in middle, swapping the trays halfway during baking so they cook evenly. Cool on the trays for 10 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool. Store the biscuits in an airtight container; biscuits will keep for up to 1 week. Good luck with that though.
