Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Brownies

There’s nothing quite like getting your hair did to make you feel like a lady.

It’s that lovely pampered feeling that you can only get from someone fussing over you in a completely superfluous way. Also the way your hair sits just right, a way that for some reason you can never do no matter how kind and patient your stylist is explaining to you how to do it.

I have pin straight Asian hair, and yet I can’t get my hair as smooth as she gets it.

I’m convinced that all hair stylists are some sort of magicians.

Well, the good ones are at least.

When I was about 6 or 7 years old, after a viewing of The Little Mermaid, a friend and I decided we’d both grow our hair all the way down to our waists. I think I was also going to learn how to sing while leaning on rocks.

My mom cut my hair within the year. I had come to realize that waiting for your hair to grow out takes foreverrrr… /whineykidvoice

I never did learn how to sing, with or without the rock, but I did get this one haircut that led to Ariel-esque locks.

When I was in grade 8, my school treated the completion of junior high similarly to the grander achievement of completing high school, by holding both a graduation ceremony and a “grad dance” for the students. All the girls of course aimed to treat it like a real prom, with fancy dresses and fancier hair.

I didn’t like up-dos though. I thought they were too tight and severe looking and frankly were a lot of money to pay just to get your hair put in a different location on your head.

I was a bit of a tomboy.

So instead, I flipped through magazines filled with pictures of celebrities, looking for a potential “makeover”. The trouble with “makeovers” is the fact that they inherently must be notably different than your current style.

And maybe the reason it’s not your style isn’t because it’s been the perfect hair you’ve been missing all along, but that it’s been the wrong hair for you… all along.

I love my currently stylist. She’s so good that I never actually tell her what to do anymore, I just sit back and wait for her to make me to look good.

I trust her to know what makes me look good. She’s a magician.

The man who did my grade 8 haircut was not a magician.

In his defense, I got what I asked for. I had picked out a short bob from the pages of People magazine that looked wonderful on Cameron Diaz. Unfortunately, while her face was slender and pointed, mine was square. I have my dad’s jaw.

And I framed it with a blunt bob that stopped right where my chin did, making my face even more square than my father’s.

This is the bigger reason why I let my current stylist do whatever she wants to me. She understands my face shape and my colouring way better than I ever could, and would never let me do something to myself that would make me look worse.

Anyhow, the short bob haircut traumatized me so severely that I didn’t get another haircut for the next 3 years. Not even a trim. And my hair grows at a relatively quick pace.

It was down to my waist before I donated 12 inches of it to Wigs for Kids in my senior year. (Side note, my hair was so long that when I cut off 12 inches of it, not everyone noticed.)

What does this have to do with Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Brownies? I have no idea. I’ll just be frank, I had a point when I started this post that related hair stories back to the brownies, but I lost it somewhere while I was describing that grade 8 haircut.

Ugh… that haircut. That’s how traumatizing it was. It causes me to lose brain function upon recalling it.

If you ever have a bad haircut, do yourself a flavour and make yourself brownies and eat as many of them as you want, calories be damned.

Have a hair magician? You hold on to them. You hold on to them and you DO NOT LET THEM GO.

Maybe you even make them brownies.

Hey, looksy, I tied it all together! A little roughly, but I did it!

Alright I need to quit while I’m ahead, before I picture that haircut again.

P.S. Kelly, you magician, I love you.

Adapted from Baking Joy

While I find these to be delicious, they don’t quite fit my craving for brownies. I like a fudgy, toothsome brownie, and these are much more “squidgy” as stated by Joy over at Baking Joy. This is not a bad thing, and these brownies are actually wonderful little blocks of chocolatey goodness, just don’t expect a traditional brownie!

Ingredients

• 200g (approx. 3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons) unsalted butter
• 200g (approx. 3/4 cup) smooth peanut butter
• 240g (approx. 1 cup, packed) light brown sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 200g (7 oz) good quality dark chocolate, chopped
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 200g (7 oz) ground almonds (I would grind the almonds finer than you see in the above picture, or just skip the grinding step and use almond flour, it’s the same thing.)

• Cocoa for dusting (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 170C/340F.  Line a 9×13 inch pan with parchment paper. Grease parchment.
2. Melt the butter, peanut butter, and chocolate over low heat, in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, making sure the bowl does not touch the surface of water. When ingredients are completely melted and smooth, whisk in sugar and continue stirring for a minute. Remove from heat
3. Whisk in vanilla extract.
4. Leave to cool for a few minutes, then beat in the eggs quickly and then the ground almonds.
5. Scrape into prepared pan and bake for around 15-20 minutes until just set.  Brownies should still jiggle in the middle and look slightly underdone.
6. Cool completely before cutting into squares and dusting with cocoa if desired.

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