On Christmas Day, The Beer Wench — Ashley Routson — posted a recipe for Bacon Peanut Butter Cup Beer Brownies using a brownie mix. I will eat any dessert that’s made with both peanut butter and chocolate. It’s a combination I simply cannot resist, yet another of my many obsessions. But I also love bacon. Since this dessert completes a kind of perverse trifecta, I simply had to give it a try. The fact that it used a mix also made me more likely to make it, since I am ridiculously lazy when it comes to cooking.

Ashley’s original recipe was as follows:

BEER WENCH BACON PEANUT BUTTER CUP BEER BROWNIES

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 box of brownie mix
• 3 eggs
• 1/3 cup chocolate, oatmeal or regular stout
• 1 package of bacon
• 6 whole peanut butter cups — chilled
• 2 tbsp butter

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease pan with butter. Yes, butter. Because butter makes everything better.
2. Cook entire package of bacon to desired consistency. I like a combination of crispy bacon and chewy bacon. The both add an interesting texture to the end product. Allow the bacon to cool and then dice it.
3. Chop the Peanut Butter Cups into small pieces.
4. Melt the butter and mix with the bacon. The recipe on the box technically calls for oil. Unfortunately, the only oil I had on hand was Olive Oil. So I decided that the oils from the bacon combined with melted butter would suffice for the recipe.
5. Combine the eggs, stout and bacon butter with the box brownie mix in a large bowl. Do not over mix. After all ingredients are combined, fold in the peanut butter cups.
6. Pour the mix into the greased pan and spread it evenly. Bake. For 13X9″ pan, bake 24-26 minutes. For 9×9″ pan, bake for 38-40 minutes. For 8×8″ pan, bake 52-54 minutes.
7. Serve with an Imperial Stout.

My daughter woke up feeling sick this morning so we’re not doing much of anything today. That freed me up to do some baking. So using what I had around the house, I decided to try my hand at making them. Being even lazier than most, I decided to use bacon bits instead of frying up my own. That also meant I wouldn’t have the bacon fat to substitute for vegetable oil. Fortunately, I have vegetable oil so I made a mixture of butter and oil to use instead. For the beer, I found a bottle of Moylan’s Ryan O’Sullivan Imperial Stout. My mix called for slightly different ingredients — like two instead of three eggs — but otherwise it was quite similar.

All the ingredients laid out, with the peanut butter cups already sliced and diced.

My daughter Alice helping me mix the brownies.

The brownies mixed with bacon and peanut butter cups.

Ready to go in the oven.

Just out of the oven. That scar in the pan happened when I accidentally grazed it with my silicone pot holder, pulling it out of the oven.

The finished Bacon Peanut Butter Brownies paired with some imperial stout.

I thought they turned out great. And they were very easy my way. But it appears I’ll have them all to myself. Neither my wife nor the kids thought much of them. But they worked for me. I personally think bacon and peanut butter work great together. Add chocolate and it’s divine. Thanks to Ashley for the original idea. Yum, now to eat some more brownies and drink some more beer. Happy Boxing day indeed.