Peanut Butter Chocolate Syrup Squares

I got a baking book as a farewell present on the last days I spent in Israel. So I decided to bake something from that book, although I’ve been having problems with the flour here- apparently it’s different than the Israeli (and US) one. But I’ll work around that trying out different mixtures of a number of flours.

Anyway this is basically a peanut cake with a chocolate swirl in them, you make the syrup and you make the swirl! I used chunky peanut butter and thought it made it all more interesting but you can chose whatever. I also didn’t have the size pan that was needed so I just used what I thought approximately fit.

Basic ingredients

With and without swirl

Peanut Butter Chocolate Squares:

100 gr butter, room temp.

6 tbsp peanut butter

1 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 eggs

2 tbsp milk

1 ¼ cups flour

½ tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

syrup:

½ cup sugar

3 tbsp cocoa powder

½ cup water

½ tsp vanilla extract

First make the syrup-

You can actually make this a few days ahead and keep it refrigerated. In a small saucepan place all the ingredients except for the vanilla, on medium heat. Stir until all of the sugar has melted and the mixture is smooth, now let the mixture come to a boil and let bubble gently for 2-3 minutes. Take off heat , let the syrup cool off a bit then add the vanilla. Let syrup cool at least 10 minutes before using it in the cake (I just placed the whole pan in the freezer while making the batter.

To the cake-

Beat butter, peanut butter and sugar to a fluffy mixture, then add eggs one at a time plus milk and vanilla. Sift together flour, salt and baking powder- add to the batter. Butter the pan you are using and pour in the batter, smooth it out and with the back of a spoon form 10 little pools for the syrup. Pour about a total of ½ a cup from the syrup to fill the pools, then use a knife and swirl around.

Bake for 40 minutes, until cake springs back to a touch.

Let cool and cut into squares.