I have a list of links bookmarked on my computer that’s a mile long. Yes literally, a whole mile. That’s super long. The biggest category is labeled “recipes to try” and there are some that have been there for years. This one is one I always see when I’m scrolling through the list because it’s been there for like, 5 years. I thought I should finally make it just so I could delete it and let something else win the title of longest time on the list. Because I’m all about equal opportunity. These ooey gooey brownies have the look of a gourmet concoction, but they start off with a shortcut and are thrown together in no time. You’ll use a devil’s food cake mix (we like Duncan Hines) and turn it into a brownie. The middle layer boasts fluffy, melty marshmallow cream and dots of peanut butter morsels. Sounds like a winning combination, right?? It totally is.
Start by mixing part of the sweetened condensed milk with the cake mix, butter, milk, and egg white. It doesn’t look like a cake batter, it’s super thick like this:
You’ll need to pat part of this mixture into a 9×13 inch pan. You can either flour your hands, or spray them with cooking spray to avoid big goopy chocolate hands. That layer gets popped in the oven for about 10 minutes.
While it gets baked up, grab the marshmallow cream and scoop it all out into a bowl.
Add the rest of the sweetened condensed milk and stir it up till it’s nice and smooth
Lovely, isn’t it?
Then, we add peanut butter chips. Mmmm…peanut butter chips.
What a beautiful invention.
You can certainly measure them out. Or you can dump them in and accidentally dump way more than the recipe calls for. I won’t tell.
Stir them in
Then pour the marshmallow mixture over your pre-cooked brownie mixture. The marshmallow mixture is nice and sticky so just be patient and spoon it on a little at a time and very gently spread it around.
Then take the rest of that brownie dough and use your fingers to sort of smoosh it out into flat pieces and lay them on top.
Ready for the oven! Bake for another 30 minutes and wa-lah…
(And if you’re about to send me a rude grammar-correcting email or comment, I will just tell you now that I already know that’s not the correct spelling of wa-lah and I’m using it anyway. Because it’s my blog and I feel like it. And I don’t like writing in French because people won’t pronounce it wa-lah in their heads they will say viola.
And that just sounds lame. Seriously. Stop the emails. I’m sure you have better things you could do with your time. Like make brownies!)
It will kill you to not cut into these right away, but trust me, they are much better after they’ve cooled down. You can leave them slightly warm, or cool them completely to really taste all of the flavors. They’re awesome in big squares with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top too.
Or just stuffed in your face. Your call.
A few of you readers in the comments were surprised to note the source of such a naughty looking recipe: Cooking Light Magazine! I noted that the great thing about Cooking Light is that they skim calories where they can, but without sacrificing the recipe. So while these brownies are totally drool-worthy, they use non-fat milk and non-fat sweetened condensed milk, only 1 egg white in the whole recipe and only 4 tablespoons butter. All things considered, that’s a pretty great line-up for a treat as decadent as this! So go ahead; eat one more 😉
Ooey-Gooey Peanut-Butter Brownies
Description
These ooey gooey brownies have the look of a gourmet concoction, but they start off with a shortcut and are thrown together in no time.
Ingredients
- 3/4 C sweetened condensed milk, divided (fat-free is fine)
- 1/4 C butter, melted and cooled (1/2 stick)
- 1/4 C non-fat milk
- 1 box devil’s food cake mix (18.25 oz)
- 1 large egg white, lightly beaten
- cooking spray
- 1 7 oz jar marshmallow creme (about 1 3/4 C)
- 1/2 C peanut butter morsels (not gonna lie, I used a very “heaping” 1/2 cup 🙂
Instructions
- With an electric mixer, combine 1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk, milk, butter, cake mix, and egg white. Mixture will be very thick. Spray 9×13 pan with cooking spray. Press 2/3 of the mixture into the bottom of the pan. Use either floured hands, or spray your hands with cooking spray in order to press it down without having it stick to your fingers. The layer will be thin. Bake for 10 minutes.
- Combine 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk and marshmallow creme in a bowl and combine until smooth. Stir in PB morsels. No one will tell if you stir in some extras.
- Spread marshmallow layer over brownie layer in pan. Carefully drop remaining brownie batter by spoonfuls over marshmallow mixture. Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes. (The original recipe calls for 30 minutes, but many readers have noted that 20 minutes was perfect, and I usually only bake for about 20-25). Remove from oven and cool before cutting into squares.
Questions & Reviews
oops. my website didnt link up right in the last one.
These look amazing! I have a question though, can you use peanut butter from a jar instead of the chips (and if so, how much do you think)? I am an American living in Ireland and they just dont have peanut butter chips here (they also dont have marshmellow cream but I have a recipe for that). Anyway, I think these would be wonderful for father’s day!
Maybe Crystal, I’ve never tried it! Give it a shot and let us know how it turns out!
Crystal,
I am also an American living abroad…I noticed you said you have a marshmallow cream recipe….would you mind sharing it with me!? Thank you
This is officially going on my list of foods to make
Bummer! I’m going out of town Friday morning. I live in Bellevue, 148th to be exact. You’ll be so close to my house but I won’t be. One of these days I will get to meet the lovely ladies behind these yummy recipes.
You knew it was my birthday, didn’t you?!
My gosh! Just looking at the picture of the brownies makes me want to go to Curves! :):) Thank you, Ms. Sara, for the recipe.
Question: How could I adapt this for use with my from-scratch brownie recipe – just use the dry ingredients of it? I am one of “those cooks” who loathes using box mixes, even though my mother used them, occasionally, and so have I in the past. Anyway, would just using the dry ingredients be the same as using a box mix, I hope I hope? 🙂
Did you find out if you could do this without a box. I’m just not sure what to use since they start out thick and sticky. Also, we don’t mind using the whole egg yolk here. My husbands a nutritionist and firmly believes that there is nothing wrong with the fats of milk and egg yolks! 🙂 It’s the sugar one has to worry about. So, I figure, we may as well go all out and have a glorious time with these. 🙂 Anyway, I just wanted to know if there was a way to do these from scratch or if I could use pretty much any recipe.
I just found a bag of peanut butter morsels in my pantry that I had forgotten about…Guess what I will be making this afternoon?! Thanks!!
Those look crazy good!
Every Sunday I swear that the upcoming week will be sugar-free. Swimsuit season is here for heavens sake! Then you go and post something like this and I lose all will power!
These sound scrumptious! Only I really hate to throw away egg yolks – do you think I could use a whole egg, and maybe a little less butter?
I’m thinking about making these with graham cracker pieces instead of peanut butter chips so they’ll turn out like s’mores. That should work, right? Although it might be very dangerous before swimsuit season.
mmm yummy. The only thing is that the graham crackers might sort of melt into goo while baking. You might try sprinkling them on top? I bet it would be good though!
Graham cracker pieces might get gooey, but I bet you could try something like honey teddy grahams and they might hold up in the baking process better. Sounds sooo good. I love me some pb but I also love me some s’mores.
Wow. This will be the death of me. I’m going to have to wait to make these for a party or something because it’d be way too dangerous to have these sitting on my kitchen counter for more than an hour.
oh, heaven help me.
HOLY COW!!! Or should I say, Oh my HECK! 🙂 YUM-O!!! Guess I’m heading back to the store today!
I have a feeling my husband would die for this 🙂
My daughter just gave me your recipe book for my birthday….love it. You have a great site here.
Happy Day
It’s a good thing I love making cookies from cake mix, so I have a like bajillion boxes of cake mix in my cupboard asking to be turned into these brownies.
YUM!! This is like a combination of a bar cookie recipe I recently got (and LOVE and have been meaning to send your way because it uses ingredients I often see on your site) and Mississippi Mud brownies. Can’t wait to try it. Plus the hubs love PB, so this should be a winner!! 🙂
Looking forward to Seattle this weekend!! My boy is spending the weekend with his grandparents for the first time so my hubby and I have the trip to ourselves. Still deciding whether we’ll do 1 or 2 nights with our added freedom. Oh, and I had to laugh yesterday when he said, “do you think they’d recognize you?” I said, “Ha ha! No! But it’s a nice thought.” 😉
ooh, that does sound yummy- send it our way!
And I’m so excited we’ll get to meet you! Which signing are you coming to?
This looks so good! I’ve made a similar recipe with German Chocolate cake mix and caramel, super yummy! I am wondering if it’s possible to use a German Chocolate cake mix with this recipe as well instead of the Devil’s Food cake mix? Then I would have all the ingredients in the house to make it today 🙂
Jill I’m guessing that would be just fine! Go for it!
Ohhh Jill, are you referring to the “crack” brownies? AKA “break-up brownies?” hehehehe they are famous in my friend group! Im trying these ones next, hopefully tonight!
Sorry to double post, but I forgot to mention that if you are talking about the break-up brownies, I have done the reverse swap and used devils food in place of the German choc, and it was still delish..so that logic might apply for these! (and I see Sara has pre-approved that :)) For some reason I have a hard time finding the GC in stores around here…
This is one of my favorite Cooking Light recipes- I made it multiple times and it is always delicious. Now I want to make it again!
you are naughty. i could stare at those all day!
This is the problem with living in another country. We don’t really have box mixes and marshmallow in a jar is very hard to come by (or really really expensive!) and I am pretty confident we do not have peanut butter chips (sigh). Looks great though!
🙁 I will gladly send you any ingredient that you can’t get wherever you live, no really I will! I would have a hard time living somewhere I couldn’t get ingredients for Mexican food. Just let me know.
Regards,
Margail
I would be thrilled to send you the ingredients to make this recipe as well. That would make my day to package it all up for you. Please, let me know where to send and it will be on its way!
These sound a lot like the Mississippi Mud Cake my Mom always made (sans peanut butter chips). So this recipe hits two high notes for me, childhood memories and it starts with a boxed cake mix, and I’m not a make it from scratch cook.
Oh.my.yummy!
My to make bookmark list got so long that I had to start dividing them up into categories! But this recipe right here is moving up in priority!
Ohmigosh, me too!! Seriously, so many recipes…so little time!
Family Home Evening treat tonight? Why, yes, I think I’ve found it. Thanks!
I thought the same thing!! Too bad its not my turn (we meet with the in-law’s). I will probably have to eat a plain, box made cake with canned frosting instead. . . but NEXT week, I am gonna knock their socks off with these babies!! WOo hoo!!
Am I the only one who giggled a little when they saw this recipe was from “Cooking Light” magazine??? After the well-detailed description of how rich and decadent they are, it just caught me off guard. 🙂
Can’t wait to make these!
I thought the same thing!
Right?! That’s what I love about Cooking Light, it’s not “diet food” like some people assume, it’s just about skimming calories in the right places without sacrificing the overall dish. So in this recipe, notice they use non-fat sweetened condensed milk, nonfat milk, only 1 egg white, and only 4 tablespoons butter. That’s pretty great for something so decadent!
Very true! Another reason to bake me some of these! 🙂
Delicious! I can’t wait to try these.
These sound glorious! I’m a New Englander, so it’d be Fluff for me for this recipe. Oh goodness, I can’t wait to give this a shot.
I can relate! I grew up eating Peanut Butter and Fluff sandwiches. Then when I moved West, no one knew what I was talking about.
These look Devine.
These look so delicious! I can feel my teeth starting to hurt already, though 🙂