Week 20: Peanut Butter Cup Brownies!

3 more weeks until summer vacation!

15 more days until 2.5 months of days spent like this:

Or this:

Enough said.

We had an absolutely wonderful weekend.  A busy one.  But, definitely worth all the scrambling, packing, and driving around.

Friday, we picked up the boys from daycare and went to dinner at Senate Coney Island after hearing for months about how delicious their food is.  I was impressed.  Their greek salad dressing was awesome!  We went on to the Livonia Rec Center to get a summer membership.  Even as a non-resident, it's ridiculously cheap to access the type of gym equipment, indoor and outdoor playscapes, rock-climbing wall, zero-depth pool, water slide, and lazy river.  It was a blast!  We've already decided this is our new Friday after work tradition until the end of the school year!

Saturday morning we headed over to the Farmer's Market for yummy muffins and some shopping.  It was like the boys knew we were going to have a long day and a night out.  They both slept through the night and slept in until 7:45am!

I went to go get my hair cut and done for the first time in a....year?  Clearly I need to make a point of taking better care of myself.  Then we were off to Troy to drop off the dog, the boys, and head over to Rochester for Dave and Christie's Wedding!  It was an absolutely gorgeous day to get married and both the bride and groom looked stunning on their special day.  Congrats guys!

Sunday, Scott met up with his dad for some golf and I hung out with the boys at my parents' house.  We took the kids up to the park.  Considering it was 80 degrees at 10am, it was a hot walk there and back.  The rest of the day we hung out inside and we all took an afternoon nap.

By the time we got back home Sunday afternoon, we were ready to just unwind.  This warm weather really has me itching for the school year to be over so that we can do fun activities all week long instead of trying to jam it all in one weekend.

Since there's only 3 weeks left of work and I love my lunch group so much, I decided to make them peanut butter cup brownies.  I've made them once before, so technically I cheated this week.  But, seriously, these are so good and so easy to make, I had to blog about them!  Whoever came up with this is a genious!  One of our co-workers buys a Costco bag of assorted chocolates and the peanut butter cups are always the first to go.  So, it was a no-brainer that these will be a hit tomorrow!

Peanut Butter Cup Brownies

Recipe adapted from Nestle’s Very Best Baking

Makes 40 brownies as adapted

1 box of your favorite brownie mix
1/2 cup peanut butter chips
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup creamy peanut butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray or grease 40 mini-muffin cups.

 Prepare boxed brownie mix as directed. Spoon batter evenly into muffin cups (about 1 heaping teaspoon). Bake for 13-15 minutes or until top is set and a toothpick inserted into center comes out slightly wet. After brownies are out of the oven, wait for centers to fall. This will happen upon cooling. If not then tap the centers with the back of a teaspoon to make a hole for the peanut butter.

Place peanut butter in a small microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high for 45 seconds then stir. While brownies are still warm spoon about half a teaspoon of peanut butter into the center of each brownie. Top with semi-sweet chocolate chips and peanut butter chips. Cool completely in pan.

 Enjoy guys!