Who loves peanut butter and chocolate together?....I DO!!

It's all about the food!

Who loves peanut butter and chocolate together?....I DO!!

12/6/2018

Work, Christmas and potlucks...they go hand in hand, don't they? It's the best excuse ever for trying all kinds of different foods. Also, best setting for testing out a new recipes!

So...we had a Christmas potluck at work yesterday. There was only one person slated to bring a dessert item (and it turned out to be a very tasty apple crisp..yum!), so I decided to bring something for dessert as well. Of course, it was getting kind of late the night before, so I needed something that would be quick and easy and not have to bake in the oven for an hour or more.

I did an ingredient check in my cupboards and found peanut butter and chocolate chips and icing sugar....and voila....the peanut butter bar was the logical thing to make.

Peanut Butter Bars

Ingredients:
Base

1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups icing sugar

Topping

1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips (300 gr)
1/2 cup peanut butter

Directions for base:

Line a 9 x 9 cake pan with parchment paper.
In a non-stick pot, melt together the butter and the cup of peanut butter. Stir constantly so it doesn't burn. When it is liquid, remove from heat and add the vanilla extract and stir to combine.
Pour into a large mixing bowl and add the icing sugar, one cup at a time. Mix with hand mixer after adding each cup of sugar.
When the mixture looks crumbly, but still moist, dump it in the lined cake pan.
Spread it evenly around the pan and smooth down the top so it is level. (I used my hands to do this.) Once this has been completed, make the chocolate topping.

Directions for topping:

Melt the chocolate chips and peanut butter together in a non-stick pot, constantly stirring.
Once it's smooth with no visible chips showing, pour it onto the prepared base and spread around, covering the whole area.
Put in fridge to chill for a short period of time, maybe a half an hour to an hour. They need to chill/set for a bit before you can cut them, but not too long or they will not cut properly. If you forgot and left them in the fridge too long, just set them on the counter top for a while to soften before doing the next step.
Take out of fridge and using the edges of the parchment paper, lift out of the pan and transfer to a cutting board. Using a sharp knife, cut into the desired size shapes.
Keep squares stored in the fridge.

0 Comments

About Me:

I was born in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and spent the first half my life there. I became a mom just after I turned 20 and within a couple of years, decided to move from a small town to a bigger city to take advantage of better job opportunities. After a few great jobs, I finally settled in at a legal publishing company. 13 years later, I'm still there.

A couple of years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a tumor on my uterus and second one on an ovary. I went through a year of surgery and chemo/radiation. There were a lot of sleepless nights where I baked and tested out recipes. The chemo nurses loved when that happened cuz I brought them lots of goodies! I really don't like complex recipes. I like simple, easy to make things. So when I found a great recipe, or threw together ingredients that really worked, I would write the recipe down on a slip of paper. After I started "misplacing" those notes (blaming it on chemo brain) I decided there needed to be a better way to keep track of them.
Hence, "Jeanne's Recipes & Stuff" was born.

Kitchen Hacks!

Cut brownies without the crumbs:
There’s nothing worse than pulling out a pan of perfect-smelling brownies only to destroy the entire pan when it comes time to slice. For perfectly square, clean-cut brownies (or other bars) grease a baking pan, line it with two strips of parchment (one from left to right, one from front to back), and grease the parchment paper too. Once cooked, let sit until cool to the touch. Once cooled, use the parchment paper edges to lift the brownies from the pan. Then slice with a serrated knife.