Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies

Happy World Book Day! We’re kicking off this year’s Storybook Science series with a tasty science activity inspired by Piggy Let’s Be Friends. Bloomsbury Publishing sent us a copy for review. Chocolate covered peanut butter swirl brownies are a great way to get kids in the kitchen. Cooking and baking introduces them to all kinds of science skills like measuring and following directions. We’re also focusing on our senses of taste, smell, and touch.  I get commissions for purchases made through the affiliate links in this post.

Piggy Let’s Be Friends by Trevor Lai

Piggy Let’s Be Friends is, as you might have guessed, a story about friendship. It is the second book in the Piggy series. In the first book, Piggy meets his first friend, Kate. Together they made friends with everyone in the forest. In the second book we meet Miles. Miles is a mole and he lives under the forest. He was always alone because he was afraid to go above ground. One day he meets Piggy, but he’s still too nervous to come out. (When he’s nervous, he sneezes.) Later that day, he smells Kate’s blueberry muffins and finally ventures above ground. Piggy and Kate invite them to their tea party. Miles goes home and makes a cake to share.

On the day of the party, he carries his cake above ground but then he starts to feel nervous. One big sneeze and Miles falls back into his hole. The cake lands on his head and some of the other animals make fun of him. Miles wishes he had never gone above ground. He’s all alone again. Not to worry, Piggy had a plan! Piggy and his friends take the tea party underground to Miles. That’s the story of how Piggy became friends with everyone in the forest including Miles.

Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies

In the story, Piggy Let’s Be Friends, the friends had blueberry muffins, cookies, and carrots at their tea party. We imagined what we would bring to the party and chose brownies.

Brownies are an easy dessert to let kids help with. They just require measuring, dumping, and stirring. Use your favorite brownie recipe or grab a box mix like we do. Creating a peanut butter swirl is a super fun addition that kids can help do as well. Depending on your comfort level, covering the brownies in chocolate may be a job for a grown up or at least an older child. It require some dexterity and the melted chocolate can be hot.

Ingredients for Peanut Butter Swirl Brownie Recipe

• brownie batter (box mix, oil, water, eggs or your favorite recipe)
• 1/2 cup peanut butter (I like Jif Natural Peanut Butter)
• 2 tablespoons powdered sugar
• Melting chocolate or chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli Chocolate Chips.) Be sure to choose a chocolate you would enjoy eating.

How to Make Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies

Start by making your normal brownie batter and pouring it into a greased 13×9 inch pan. My toddler (Elon) helped make our brownie batter.

Next, place 1/2 cup peanut butter in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave for 30 seconds. (Caution: it will be hot.) Add in 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar. Stir until the lumps are gone. Elon insisted on helping with this step, but I had to finish because he couldn’t stir well enough to get the sugar incorporated.

Drop spoonfuls of the peanut butter mixture onto the brownie batter. (We didn’t end up adding all of the peanut butter to the batter. Use your judgement and add as much as you like.) Swirl with a knife. I showed Elon how to accomplish this. He was busy dropping the peanut butter when big brother came into the kitchen to see what we were doing. Aiden and Elon both swirled the peanut butter into the brownie batter.

Bake the brownies according to the box directions. (For us, it was 350° for 28-31 minutes.) They may need an extra minute or two because of the added peanut butter.

Allow the brownies to cool completely. Cut into heart shapes. Lily (almost 4) helped with this step. She pushed the cookie cutter into the brownies.

I used a knife to remove the brownie around the outside of the cookie cutter and then to help me remove the brownie heart from pan.

Cover the brownie hearts in melted chocolate. Follow the directions on your bag of chocolate chips or melting chocolate for how to melt the chocolate. You can use a microwave, double boiler, or a melting pot. I find a melting pot to be an easy solution because it keeps the chocolate melted while you work through all of the brownie hearts. You’ll need to reheat the chocolate if you don’t use one.

Allow the chocolate covered peanut butter swirl brownies to cool. I placed mine in the refrigerator to speed up the process.

Have a Tea Party

Now that you have chocolate covered peanut butter swirl brownies, you can have a tea party with friends. This is where we continue to use our senses and make observations. Smell the chocolate. Taste the chocolate. What colors did we use? We added blueberries as a nod to Miles the mole and carrots as well. What do the foods taste like? Do you like them?

Lily was thrilled to have a tea party with the brownies. Elon preferred to eat all of the blueberries. I’m sure Miles, the mole, would approve.

Storybook Science

The first week of our Storybook Science series features Sensory Science. Follow along with the rest of our Storybook Science here. Bloggers will be sharing a new science idea inspired by a children’s book throughout the month of March.

Subscribe to the Inspiration Laboratories newsletter. Each issue has exclusive hands-on science explorations for children, a recap of our latest activities, and special resources selected just for you!