Recipe #29: Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars

Today I could not think of anything I wanted to make for this blog and even though Ian and I both had today off we actually spent half of the day sleeping. This past week I worked at 7AM and did not get a lot of sleep because instead of going to bed at a decent hour I would wait for Ian to come home from work, which was around 10PM. I would wait to cook when he got home so that I could spend a couple of hours with him before not seeing him again the next day. (The saga continued this entire week...)

So naturally I was exhausted by yesterday evening; not only did we go to bed early last night but we did not wake up until noon today! Well anyway, we had plans to eat dinner with a couple of friends we had not seen in a couple of months. Since all we had for breakfast at lunchtime was coffee I was left to find something for dessert.

Well, one of our friends is pregnant and while organizing our dinner plans for tonight we were eager to find what she was craving so we knew what restaurant to look for/stray from. Her husband informed us that lately she had been craving ding dongs and peanut butter. Unfortunately, neither Ian nor myself were interested in eating either of those items for dinner but we were willing to explore those options for dessert.

I decided to make our friends some homemade chocolate peanut butter bars, which I found the recipe from here: http://sweetpeaskitchen.com/2011/04/18/peanut-butter-cup-bars/.  I did consider making homemade ding dongs but I did not have a lot of time otherwise I probably would have made the attempt. Even though we were all very full from dinner I think these peanut butter bars should have at least somewhat satisfied part of her cravings!

Ingredients:

* 3/4 cups of Butter, divided
* 1 3/4 cups of Powdered Sugar
* 3/4 cups of Smooth Peanut Butter
* 1/4 cup of Crunchy Peanut Butter
* 3/4 cups of Graham Cracker Crumbs
* 1 cup of Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips









Cooking Directions:

In an 8x8 square baking dish spray with Canola Oil. Then take a long piece of wax paper and place inside of the dish so that it hangs about 2 inches over the sides. Then spray the wax paper.

In a medium sauce pan slowly melt 1/2 cup of butter on low heat.

Once melted, add the powdered sugar until mixture is smooth.

Stir in the smooth and crunchy peanut butter as well as the graham cracker crumbs. (I had whole graham crackers so I had to place a few crackers in a Ziploc bag before physically grinding them.)

Pour the peanut butter mixture into the baking dish.

In the now empty sauce pan add the remainder of the butter and the chocolate chips. When the mix is almost completely melted remove from the heat and mix until smooth.

Pour over the top of the peanut and spread so that it covers the entire top.

Place the baking dish in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before using the extra wax paper in the baking dish to remove the chocolate peanut butter block.

Place chocolate peanut butter block, that is on the wax paper, onto a cutting board and slice into 16 pieces.