Peanut Butter Fudge Iced Brownies
I’ve lost count of how many of you have tried this icing since I first brought it to Southern Plate back in 2008 on Red’s birthday cake. Our family tradition has us putting it over a yellow cake but the combination of chocolate brownies paired with this old fashioned boiled icing is a whole new level of old fashioned decadence – so much so that I’m devoting a whole new post to it!
We’re gonna start with boxed mix made brownies. I used two boxes of mix to make mine extra thick. If you do that you need to cut your oven temperature down to 325 and add about fifteen minutes to the baking process.
As far as which mix to choose goes, I usually get Kroger brand or some other generic but when I went to Krogers this brand was on sale for $1.00 a box. I’d go for whatever is cheapest where you shop because I’ve never met a brownie mix I didn’t like :).
You don’t have to use two boxes of mix, one is fine and you get to taste more of the icing!
You can also make them from scratch by using your own recipe or Susan Spencer’s Grandmothers recipe for Blue Ribbon Brownies. The peanut butter icing will take on the star of the show so go with whatever you prefer and what you have time for but as for me and my house, we will make them from a mix today.
Folks that turn their noses up at anything that was baked for them, be it from a mix or completely from scratch, don’t deserve to have people making them brownies anyhow. Snootiness doesn’t bother me though, because that just means there is extra room in my life for good hearted folks with more sense 🙂
For our icing we’ll need: Peanut butter, sugar, a bit of salt, bit of shortening and margarine, little vanilla (I really do need to get a smaller bottle coz eventually someone is going to think they have to go buy a gallon), and some milk.
Place your milk, sugar, shortening, margarine, and salt in a good sauce pot and put this over medium heat.
Stir constantly while you wait on all of it to melt and come to a boil.
This is what it looks like as it starts to melt.
My photo turned out with more yellow than it actually had so ignore that. Clearly, I’m not seeking accolades for my food photography.
I’m more like ~tilts head and looks before snapping the pic~ Eh. Good enough.
This is the icing mixture as it has come to a boil.
What you are going to do is stir it constantly until it comes to a full rolling boil and then stop and let it boil on it’s own (no stirring) for two minutes.
Remove from heat and pour in vanilla.
(I forget this half the time and it still turns out fine)
Add in your peanut butter and stir quickly until it is all melted and well blended.
Folks, I’m NOT kidding about stir quickly here. This sets up fast.
Now this is ready to pour.
Pour over your cooled brownies and spread to cover it all.
Mine would have been all smooth but I was trying to take photos at the same time and that ate up some of the time I should have been spreading.
Allow to cool completely .
You can occupy yourself during this time by licking the sauce pot clean once it cools enough to let you!
Go impress people because you rock. Seriously, you do. Look what you just made!
[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:73]
*This recipe works fine for a 9×13 or 8×8. If making an 8×8 pan of brownies, I’d still use this same amount of icing and just let it be thicker.
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I hope you’ll take time to read the story of why this icing is so special to me by clicking here.
You can also find the story and this icing recipe on page 258 of the Southern Plate cookbook.
I want to thank you again for all of your kind reviews on Amazon.com – My mother actually read them all the other day!
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Christy…dying to try this today for hubby. Car in shop, no shortening in the house but have everything else. Will it be missed? Can I double up on the margarine? Wondered if it helped with the thickening process? Opinion please and they sound WONDERFUL…..Carol
Yes Christy-I was also wondering if you could leave the shortening out? Sounds delicious!
Yes i would use it to ice a Texas sheet cake yummo
ohhh, that sounds good!
my mom uses this frosting on top of rice krispy treats…a family favorite!!!! this does sound yummy will be on my Christmas treats list thanks for the recipe!
All I can say is YUMMMMMMY! Easy to make and delicious.
I am so glad to hear that you liked them Lisa!! They are always a favorite around here and go quickly.
I made this icing on the yellow cake. I used margarine, shortening, brown sugar, and skim milk. I timed it to boil exactly 2 minutes, and it was very runny. Most of it ran down the sides and under the cake instead of staying on top of it. What did I do wrong?
Amazing taste though, even though we’re scraping the icing off the sides and bottom of the pan!
First off, I’m so sorry this didn’t turn out perfect for you! BUT I’m glad it tasted good! You seem to have my attitude towards things, if we can still eat it, we’re gonna be grateful for it! Even if we can’t, we’ll still find some reason to be thankful! lol
I have never used skim milk in making this and all of the other ingredients are just how I always do them, so I’m thinking the skim milk has to be the culprit here. If you don’t normally stock whole milk, a good way to get around changing your habits would be to keep evaporated milk in a can on hand and that should work just fine. I hope you try it again and I am so sorry it didn’t turn out!
Gratefully,
Christy
I wondered about the skim milk too but wasn’t sure. I should be just stirring it briefly to cool it slightly before pouring on the cake – right? Not getting out my mixer and beating it into submission? How thick should it be before I pour it on the cake?
Thanks for your help! I’m eating way too much of this cake the last couple of days.
I made these brownies with pbf icing a few days ago and they are delicious! However, I did have a question…..my icing ended up kind of dry and crumbly and didn’t stick to the brownies at all. When I tried to cut the brownies (with icing on them) it ended up being a bit of a mess. Tasted great yes – looked great – not so much. Any idea what I might have done wrong to the icing to make it dry and crumbly? Thanks very much!
I made these last weekend while at the beach with my daughter and her two girls. The girls absolutely loved these and the 14 year old wanted a copy of the recipe to take back to Birmingham with her! She had them for breakfast and snack! I know, not a good idea but hey, we were on vacation!