Peanut butter pomegranate blondies with white chocolate and peanut butter chips! It is pomegranate season and my neighbor next door (Jennifer), has a huge pomegranate tree in her backyard. So I was lucky enough to score two ziplock bags full of pomegranate seeds from Jennifer– all washed and ready to be eaten. Or, if you are me, ready to be baked into desserts! Pomegranate seeds (or arils) are edible seeds that pack quite the nutritional punch. So I figured I could take all the healthiness out of them by whipping them up into a batch of peanut butter blondies. Don’t judge.
Arils are sweet, but also tart, and when I saw the glorious red color of the arils, I instantly thought “peanut butter and jelly–but in dessert form.” Blondies are like brownies in texture, but instead of using cocoa powder you use brown sugar. Blondies have a rich taste thanks to the molasses in the brown sugar. The arils lend a slight tang to the blondie and a nice contrast in texture to the soft blondie. The choice of “chocolate” chips you use in this recipe can be adapted to your own personal tastes, or whatever you have on hand. I am sure semi-sweet chocolate chips would be yummy in this too! This is a super easy recipe to whip up, because there’s no chilling and all you have to do is plop your dough in a 9×13-inch baking pan, and bake.
Aren’t the arils just gorgeous?! If you are a pomegranate lover, you need to make these blondies! But before I get to the recipe, have you signed up for my free email subscription? Signing up means you will get an email notifying you of my latest blog post, ensuring you never miss any goodness coming from my kitchen!
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See, these remind you of peanut butter and jelly, right?!?! And the adorable bowl holding my arils is from Wilmax, as is my peanut butter spoon! Love Wilmax products!
Peanut Butter Pomegranate Blondies
Print RecipeIngredients
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
- 1 1/2 cups light brown sugar, packed
- 1 egg, room temperature
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 3/4 cups white chocolate chips
- 1/2 cup peanut butter chips
- 1 heaping cup arils (pomegranate seeds)
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350-degrees. Line a 9x13-inch baking dish with foil and spray with baking spray. Set aside.
In the bowl of your electric mixer, use the paddle attachment to beat the butter for 2-minutes until pale and smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the peanut butter and brown sugar. Mix on medium-high speed until light and fluffy. Add egg to the peanut butter mixture and beat until fully incorporated. Add vanilla extract, cinnamon and nutmeg into the mixture and beat until combined.
Slowly add the flour, baking powder and salt to the peanut butter mixture, mixing on low until just barely combined. On the lowest speed, add your chocolate chips and arils. Mix for 30-seconds or until all ingredients are just incorporated.
Use a rubber scraper to scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl and gently stir mixture to ensure all ingredients are incorporated.
Dump yo dough into your prepared 9x13-inch baking dish and use the rubber scraper (or your fingers) to push the dough evenly into the pan. Put pan in preheated 350-degree oven for 28-minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out without raw batter on it. Remove from oven.
Let blondies cool in the pan, to finish setting up. When it's time to cut into these babies, just pull up on the foil to remove the entire slab of blondies and then cut into desired sized squares.
Notes
If you don't like pomegranate, you could easily sub them out for fresh cranberries. I sprinkled my arils with a little bit of flour before adding them to the dough to prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the dough during baking. Also, use whatever chocolate chips you like in this recipe. I have several bags of all kinds of baking chips in my pantry, so I just mixed it up using the peanut butter chips and white chocolate chips.
Okay…confession: these have more of a peanut butter taste than anything else. But I am not complaining. I just don’t want you to think these taste like pomegranate. It’s more peanut butter than pomegranate. If you REALLY love pomegranate, you could probably just leave out the chocolate chips and use all arils instead!
Don’t you just want to sink your teeth in one of these babies???
If you make this recipe or just want to say hi, leave me a comment! I love the comments!
XOXO,
Kelly
PS- You can find this recipe and many other yummy recipes from various bloggers over at the Peaches + Salt Link Party by clicking here!! I also am linked up at The Weekend Potluck Link party…click here to check it out!
6 Comments
Kim Lange @ The Baking ChocolaTess
November 14, 2016 at 6:43 PMOMGosh Kelly! I love your twist on pbj into pomegranate and peanut butter blondies! <3 Sounds intriguing and they look super yummy!
Kelly
November 14, 2016 at 8:08 PMHi Kim! Thank you!! It was a kitchen experiment gone right! But you can never really go wrong when the recipe starts off with peanut butter, right?!
Madalyn Parr
November 15, 2016 at 5:47 PMOkay I need to make these as well! Would never of thought to put peanut butter and pomegranate together, but I’ll try anything! Thanks for sharing #PSLinkParty! I added this to our pinterest board, you can join and pin by commenting here:https://www.pinterest.com/pin/311381761721915147/
Kelly
November 15, 2016 at 6:11 PMYes these are definitely a different kind of dessert! Hahaha my mad scientist/baking skills at work. Ok I followed the Pinterest board and commented, so I think I did it right? I am still a newbie, learning all this 🙂
Karly
November 22, 2016 at 6:55 PMThese look amazing! Thanks for linkin’ up with What’s Cookin’ Wednesday!
Kelly
November 23, 2016 at 5:55 PMHi Karly! Thank you! I love your What’s Cooking Wednesday link party, even before I started blogging! I am a longtime subscriber of your blog and always looked forward to Wednesdays 🙂 Now I am even more excited that I get to be a part of the party!! Yay! Thanks for hosting! I appreciate the work you put into it!