I don't want kids...but I sure do love these Peanut Butter Cheesecake Brownie Babies!

I decided to make these Peanut Butter Cheesecake Brownie Babies at the most ironic time, as the Boyfriend and I recently started a healthy lifestyle kick. Really, trying anything of that sort while still in college in irony enough...Anyhoo, peanut butter is sadly not included on the healthy food list, but these brownie babies were so delicious they lured us back to our days of unhealthy but happy eating (the diet lasted like 2 days so whatever).

My roommate, who also very much enjoys baking, gave me a great tip about measuring peanut butter: spraying the measuring cup with baking spray so that it would be easier to scoop out. Amazing! I don't know why I never thought of it before, and it may seem like common sense but it was still pretty useful. This girl is full of some pretty nifty tips.

My favorite part of the process was mixing the peanut butter and cream cheese. My friends are always commenting that I use cream cheese in a lot of things, but it just makes everything better! I will say that I got a bit lazy at the end, so while the majority of the brownie babies were a spoonful of the peanut butter cream cheese mix into the middle of the brownie batter, the last few were all of it mixed in together. Definitely not as tasty as biting into the filling.

Yummy mixture!

One thing I would leave out in the future is the cool whip topping. It wasn't really necessary and was a little too much sugar for my taste. The cherries were fun to have though. They brownie babies were a hit, and they gave me a reason to use my cute new cupcake liners! I'll definitely try to make them again.

My roomie modeling with the cupcake liners!

Ingredients:

-1 pkg. (19 to 21 oz.) brownie mix (13x9-inch pan size)

-1 pkg. (8 oz.) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, softened-1/3 cup sugar

-1 egg

-1/4 cup peanut butter

-1/2 tsp. vanilla

-1-1/2 cups thawed COOL WHIP Whipped Topping

-20 maraschino cherries

Directions:

HEAT oven to 350ºF.PREPARE brownie batter as directed on package. Spoon into 20 paper-lined muffin cups.BEAT cream cheese, sugar, egg, peanut butter and vanilla with mixer until blended. Spoon 1 rounded Tbsp. into center of batter in each cup, pressing down slightly into batter. Bake 30 min. or until centers are set. Cool. SERVE topped with COOL WHIP and cherries.