These chocolate brownie and peanut butter cookies are not hard to make, but they’re so good I wouldn’t recommend wasting them on frenemies.

They’re soft (denture friendly), and deeply chocolatey, and are filled with lashings of salty-sweet, smooth, peanut buttercream. They’re a distant relative of a peanut butter cup, but levelled up to an arguably more sophisticated gourmet treat. They also look pretty irresistible, and work well as a dessert served with ice cream and chocolate sauce. 

Chocolate brownie and peanut butter cookies   

(Makes 14)

Ingredients

Cookies

200g dark chocolate, chopped

40g unsalted butter

2 eggs

150g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

35g plain flour, sifted

¼ tsp baking powder, sifted

¼ tsp salt

Peanut Buttercream

200g icing sugar, sieved

110g unsalted butter, at room temperature

120g smooth peanut butter

2 tsp milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

½ tsp salt

2 baking trays, lined with baking parchment

Method

Cookies

1. Preheat oven to 180˚C.

2. Melt chocolate and butter together in a small pan over a low heat until only just melted and smooth, stirring frequently. Set aside to cool.

3. In an electric mixer, whisk together the eggs, sugar and vanilla for about 10 minutes or until the mixture becomes smooth and slightly thicker.

4. Gently fold the cooled chocolate and butter mixture into the eggs, sugar and vanilla.  Once combined, fold in the sieved flour, baking powder and salt until just combined and leave it to stand for 10 minutes.

5. Drop the mixture, 1 tablespoon per cookie on to the baking trays, leaving 5cm between them as the mixture will spread.

6. Bake for 8–10 minutes or until shiny and cracked. Allow to cool on trays.

Peanut Buttercream

1. Beat together peanut butter, butter, milk, vanilla and salt until combined. Then pour in the icing sugar and salt, and beat until smooth.

2. Sandwich the cookie pairs together using 2 tbsp of buttercream.

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