Salted Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Blondies

I can’t resist a salty sweet snack, especially one that combines peanut butter and chocolate. These Salted Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Blondies are a delicious and easy treat that will satisfy your salty-sweet tooth, too. The Salted Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Blondies are made with a buttery peanut butter dough that is loaded with dark chocolate chunks and topped with a generous sprinkle of sea salt to bring out the nutty flavor of the peanut butter in every bite.

I usually bake blondies in a square or rectangular baking pan, just as I do for most brownie recipes, but this blondie recipe is baked in a muffin pan instead. The muffin pan produces perfectly round blondies that all have the same ratio of slightly crispy edge to chewy center. It also means that each blondie comes in its own wrapper, making it easy to transport and share them!

The dough comes together in just a couple of minutes and is made with melted butter, peanut butter and both brown and white sugars. It is rich without being too heavy, with a good peanut butter flavor and plenty of chocolate. You can buy dark or semisweet chocolate chunks or create your own by chopping up a larger block of chocolate. Chocolate chips can also be used if that is what you have on hand. Regardless of what shape you opt to work with, the more intense flavor of dark or semisweet chocolate is a better choice than milk chocolate in this recipe, as that can get too sweet.

Line the muffin cups with paper liners before filling them with blondie dough to make it easy to remove the baked blondies. If you want to try to create more contrast between the exterior and chewy center, you can skip the dough in favor of greasing the pan and placing the dough directly into the muffin cups – but be sure to grease the pan well if you go for the wrapper-less route! The finishing touch on these is a generous sprinkle of sea salt before baking. I prefer the flaky sea salt, but any coarse salt will do to really bring out the savory peanut butter and sweet chocolate in each bite.

Salted Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Blondies
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup white sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter (national brand)
1 cup dark (or semisweet) chocolate chunks
coarse sea salt, for topping

Preheat oven to 350F. Line 18 muffin cups with paper liners.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda and salt.
In a large bowl, stir together butter and sugars until well-combined. Stir in egg, vanilla extract and peanut butter, followed by the flour mixture. Mix until dough is uniform and no streaks of dry ingredients remain visible. Stir in chocolate chunks until well-distributed.
Divide dough into prepared muffin tins, filling each about 2/3-3/4 full. Sprinkle with sea salt.
Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until blondies have set on the outside edge and have a hint of color to their tops.
Allow blondies to cool for about 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes 18 blondies