Peanut Butter Crispy Bars

This blog is almost three months old and it’s pretty apparent that I love peanut butter and chocolate. It would be embarrassing if it weren’t so delicious.

I’d been eying making these bars from SmittenKitchen for a while and finally couldn’t stand it any longer. I wasn’t going to let little things like a lack of candy thermometer, the insane amounts of calories they contain, or incoming hordes of visitor stop me. I would blame visitors or lack of time for the few photographs I managed to take, but really it was because I was too busy stuffing my face to bother with the camera.

The layers in this dish are a pain to make, but a joy to eat. Of course, the entire time I kept flashing back to this commercial, am I the only one who remembers that?

Peanut Butter Crispy Bars

From SmittenKitchen 

I used an 8x8 pan with curved sides, which I wouldn’t recommend. It makes for some oddly curved pieces, though you will likely soon realize, as I did, that these pieces have lots of the chocolate and chocolate-peanut butter layers and little of the crispy layer, and thus are even better that normal pieces. 

Ingredients:

Crispy crust

1 3/4 crispy rice cereal

1/4 cup sugar

3 tablespoons light corn syrup

3 tablespoons salted butter, melted

Semi-sweet chocolate peanut butter layer

5 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (I just used a 6-ounce bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips)

1 cup crunchy peanut butter

Dark chocolate top layer

3 ounces dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

1/2 teaspoon light corn syrup

4 tablespoons salted butter

Equipment:

8x8 baking pan, small pot, candy thermometer, wooden spoon, mixing bowl, non-reactive metal bowl

Directions: This is a treat made in stages, so be prepared to give this some time.

Make the crispy crust:

Grease the sides and bottom of the 8x8 pan. Pour the cereal in a large bowl and set aside.

Pour 1/4 cup water into a small pot.Add the sugar and corn syrup, taking care not to let any sugar or corn syrp get on the sides of the pan. Use a wooden spoon to stir until just combined. Put a candy thermometer in the saucepan and cook over medium-high heat until the mixture reaches the soft ball stage, 235F. (Or you can do what I did, which is to just eyeball it using this video as a guide and once it looked a bit golden, take it off the heat. Not a perfect method, but luckily, one that worked.)

Remove from heat, stir in butter, and pour mixture over the cereal. Stir it quickly until cereal is completely coated and pour into the 8x8 prepared pan. Press mixture into the bottom of the pan using your hands and let crust cool to room layer while you make the next step.

Make the semi-sweet chocolate peanut butter layer:

In a large non-reactive meal bowl, stir together the chocolate and crunchy peanut butter. Set over a pot of simmer water and stir with a rubber spatula until mixture is smooth. Remove bowl from pan and stir an additional 30 seconds to cool. Pour over the cooled crispy crust. Cool in the refrigerator for about a hour until the top layer hardens.

Make the dark chocolate layer:

In the same large non-reactive metal bowl, combined the dark chocolate, corn syrup, and put. Again, set it over a pot of simmering water and cook. Stir with a rubber spatula until mixture is smooth and then remove from heat, stirring an additional 30 seconds to cool. Pour this mixture on top of the layers already in the 8x8, tilted the pan to spread it out evenly.

Put the pan back into the refrigerator for an hour or until the top layer hardens.

Cut into equal squares (about 16) and serve.  These refrigerate nicely and can last in an air-tight container for about a week.