Chocolate Peanut Buddy Bars

It's over eight years since I last wrote about these Chocolate Peanut Buddy Bars, but I can't believe that I haven't made them in the intervening period. It's possible, of course - daughter has a peanut allergy, so I wouldn't have baked them while she was living here, and I cut down on the amount of baking I've been doing when my son first moved out in 2012.

Either way, they popped into my mind again when trying to decide what to make for the weekend. I wanted something that would get me through the start of the week too, when I don't have time to bake. These seemed ideal as the 30 x 20cm traybake cuts into around 24 pieces. I use a baking tin that is slightly smaller than specified in the American recipe (8 x 12" instead of 9 x 13") as that's the size of tray I have; I think standard sizes are slightly different in the USA. I added another 5 minutes to the baking time to compensate for a deeper mixture.

The only other change I make to the recipe is to use plain chocolate - about 70% - as it does cut through the sweetness of the cookie bars and gives a stronger chocolate flavour. In this blog post I've 'translated' the cup volumes to metric weights, with 150g of chocolate going into the bars, and 200g being used for the topping.

Unfortunately, I must have covered the bars before they were completely cold - when I went back the next morning to photograph them, the top was covered with little pock marks, which I can only assume was condensation dripping from the aluminium foil covering the tray overnight. It didn't affect the flavour, but did spoil the photos a bit.

Peanut Butter and Honeycomb Biscuits

I regularly visit some of the Australian food websites, such as Australian Good Food, and the Australian Women's Weekly website (Food to Love), and it was on Food to Love that I noticed this recipe for Peanut Butter and Honeycomb Biscuits. I assumed - perhaps incorrectly - that Violet Crumble Bars were the same as our Crunchie Bars, and made a batch of biscuits as soon as I'd acquired the Crunchie Bars.

It was a really simple dough to mix, and the biscuits were quick to cook. My biscuits were slightly larger than they should have been, as I only got 24 out of a batch of dough, rather than 30, but they were about the size I'd expect a biscuit to be, so I wasn't too worried about that. The longest wait, as usual, was for the drizzle of melted chocolate to set, so that the biscuits could be packed into an airtight container.

The biscuits were tasty and had an interesting texture, neither crisp nor chewy - more melt in the mouth crumbly. However, I was disappointed that the Crunchie pieces had melted to become little pockets of chewy sugar, rather than retaining the crisp honeycomb texture. I'd half expected this, but it does seem a waste to add the honeycomb when this happens during baking. The recipe would have been just as good - perhaps better - with small pieces of chocolate fudge or soft toffees used instead.

Chocolate Chip and Peanut Butter Blondies

The classic combination of peanut butter and chocolate, and a recipe from Green and Black's website. I have one of their chocolate recipe books (Unwrapped), but this recipe isn't in it. I found this while checking whether another of the recipes from the book was online, and decided it looked worth trying

I made these blondies primarily for my son, who doesn't get home-baking very often now that he's away from home. Of course, I had to make sure they were OK before passing them on to him, so after dividing the tray into 16 pieces, he got 12 and we had two each! I liked them a lot, although it looked, in the couple of pieces I tried, that some of the white chocolate had melted into the batter, rather than staying in lumps. He liked them enough to email me to say how good they were!

I only made one change to the recipe - I didn't have crunchy peanut butter, but wanted to add the crunch of nuts, so I used 125g of smooth peanut butter and 30g of finely chopped  roasted (but unsalted) peanuts.

Blondies nearly always turn out more cakey than brownies, because you don't have melted chocolate to give a fudgy texture, but this recipe was on the dense end of the spectrum, rather than the light and sponge-y end. This is definitely a recipe to make again!


Because these were so good, I'm adding them to September's We Should Cocoa link-up. After 6 years, Choclette at Tin and Thyme has changed the format of WSC; instead of setting a theme each month, anything containing some form of chocolate can be added. I'm a little sad to lose the challenge that WSC gave me - I baked many things, and used many odd combinations of ingredients, that I wouldn't have thought of trying without needing to bake for WSC.

Peanut Butter Brownies

Although I love late spring and early summer, when I can use the seasonal fruit I grow, occasionally the chocolate urge gets the better of me.

I'm still waiting for my gooseberries to ripen, but in between rhubarb cakes and crumbles, I made these peanut butter brownies, from Taste.com.au. I didn't have crunchy peanut butter, so added 30g finely chopped roasted peanuts (not salted) to 170g smooth peanut butter. I also warmed the peanut butter a little, so that the chopped nuts could be mixed in easily; this also made it easier to swirl the PB through the brownie batter.

The recipe used a slightly unusual, but easy, method of making the brownies. Although quite a lot of excess fat soaked into the baking parchment lining the baking tin, during cooking, the brownies themselves didn't seem greasy. Some of the comments on the recipe thought there was too much PB, but we both liked the fact that the peanut flavour was really strong. My only complaint was that the brownies were a bit thin.

I've previously used my favourite recipe for brownies, and combined it with peanut butter and jam (jelly) to make these brownies, and I think that if I want to make peanut butter brownies in the future I will go back to using that recipe for the chocolate base, as it makes brownies that are just the right thickness and just the right fudginess for my taste. Why tinker with perfection?

Peanut Butter and Jelly Brownies

Two of baking challenges that I like to take part in have the theme of  'America' this month. We Should Cocoa, which is guest hosted by It's Not Easy Being Greedy, wants participants to make something with an American theme, containing chocolate and the Formula 1 Foods challenge at Caroline Makes has reached the American leg of the F1GP circuit, so is inviting entries of any American inspired cooking.

On the face of it, American inspired baking, containing chocolate, is easy - I imagine almost everyone would suggest brownies at this point, but Devil's Food Cake and Mississippi Mud Pie spring to mind too. Once I'd decided to go with brownies (as they fitted in with my baking plans), I wanted produce a brownie with flavours that couldn't have come from anywhere else but America, which is why I ended up with the idea of adding peanut butter and jelly (jam) - a delicious combination which is rarely seen in Britain.

I looked at a few recipes online, and found various suggestions, such as making a batter with added peanut butter, or mixing it with cream cheese. I couldn't decide on the best approach until I found a blog post which said - take your favourite brownie recipe, and ripple in half a cup of peanut butter and half a cup of jam. Simple! So that's what I did.

My favourite brownie recipe involves melting 140g each of butter and dark chocolate, stirring in 300g of light muscovado sugar, three eggs and a dash of vanilla extract, then folding in 160g plain flour and 3 tablespoons cocoa. Once the batter was made, I put roughly 3/4 of it into a 20cm(8") square baking tin (lined with baking parchment). Then I dotted teaspoonsful of smooth peanut butter and 'cherries and berries' jam onto the batter, using about 125g of each. The remaining brownie batter was drizzled over the surface, covering some of the peanut butter and jam, but not all of it. Lastly, I used the handle of a teaspoon to mix the peanut butter, jam and top layer of batter together in random swirls, and scattered over 30g of chopped roasted salted peanuts. The brownie tray was cooked at 180C until firm but not too dry. The end point was difficult to  determine as a probe hitting peanut butter or jam made the mixture seem underdone. I think, having given it 40 minutes, that I over-baked this batch slightly. Next time I'll try a few minutes less.

Over-baking aside, these brownies were really good. Using the peanut butter undiluted by cake batter or cream cheese meant that the flavour was still strong, and the cherries and berries jam added little bursts of tart fruitiness. The crunchy topping of salted peanuts added another layer to the complexities of flavour and texture.

I was particularly keen to try peanut butter and chocolate together, as I recently tried a pack of peanut butter flavoured Oreo biscuits. I've seen these cropping up in a lot of blog posts recently, so was intrigued enough to try them when I saw them in stock in my local supermarket. What a disappointment! I couldn't taste the peanut butter at all, so it was no surprise to read the ingredient list and find there were no real peanuts in the biscuit filling - only 'flavouring'!

It's also been National Chocolate Week this week, so my post is just in time to celebrate that, although chocolate is part of my everyday life - I don't need a special week to celebrate it!

We Should Cocoa (rules here) is the brainchild of Choclette, who writes the Tin and Thyme blog, although she often has guest hosts to share the duties of taking in the entries and compiling the end of month round up.

Caroline, at Caroline Makes, started the Formula 1 Food challenge at the start of this season, because her boyfriend is an avid motor racing fan. It hasn't gained a huge following, but I've had a lot of fun trying to find foods from the various countries where the races have taken place. It's sometimes been difficult to find something which I feel competent enough to tackle. The last three races of the season are in Mexico, Brazil and Abu Dhabi, the last of which sounds particularly challenging.

Chocolate, Peanut and Biscuit Spread Cookie Bars

These cookie bars were made for the blog challenge, Formula 1 Foods, run by Caroline at Caroline Makes. The idea is to cook a dish inspired by the country where each round of the F1 Grand Prix races take place. For some  races I have found traditional recipes from the country in question, and for others I have used ingredients particularly associated with that country. The next race takes place in Belgium, which has a reputation for great patisserie similar to that of France, as well as a few traditional pastries of it's own, such as waffles, rice tart, a meringue confection known as a Merveilleux, and a curd pie called a mattentaarte. And then there's the chocolate, of course - the Belgians have a long tradition of producing superb quality chocolates!

Unfortunately, none of the traditional recipes fitted in with the sort of baking I wanted to do, both in terms of time and what would get eaten, so I decided to take inspiration from two Belgian foodstuffs - chocolate and Speculoos biscuits (in the form of Lotus caramelised biscuit spread). The recipe I chose was loosely based on this one from Sally's Baking Addiction, but underwent quite a few changes, both to introduce lots of dark chocolate and to adapt to things I didn't have in the storecupboard.

I was quite perturbed to find out, despite my guesstimate of how much was left in the jar, that I didn't have enough biscuit spread (or cookie butter, as it's known in the USA), but decided to replace it with peanut butter as in the past I'd made a similar traybake using biscuit spread as a straight substitute for peanut butter. Once that decision was made, it seemed a good idea to add some chopped roast peanuts instead of some of the chocolate, to emphasise the peanut part of the recipe. I added a little ground cinnamon to strengthen the flavour of the biscuit spread, used plain wholemeal flour instead of white and two whole eggs instead of 1 egg and an extra yolk. The chocolate that was taken out of the cookie dough was used as a topping.

Ingredients
125g plain wholemeal flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
75g unsalted butter, melted
200g light muscovado sugar
2 medium eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
130g biscuit spread
70g smooth peanut butter
100g coarsely chopped plain chocolate
50g unsalted roasted peanuts, chopped

Topping - 100g finely chopped plain chocolate

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 180C, line a 20 x 20cm (8 x 8") square baking tin with baking parchment.
Mix the salt, cinnamon and raising agents with the flour. Mix the sugar and melted butter in a large bowl, then beat in the eggs, vanilla, biscuit spread and peanut butter. Fold in the flour mix, then the chopped chocolate and nuts. Transfer the mixture to the lined baking tin and spread evenly. Bake for 30 minutes or until a probe comes out with only a few damp crumbs clinging to it. Turn off the oven, sprinkle the chocolate for the topping over the baked dough, as evenly as possible and return to the cooling oven for 5 minutes. Remove the tray from the oven and spread the melted chocolate with a spatula.
Cool completely in the baking tin before removing and cutting into bars or squares.

I didn't think this bake was entirely successful. The dough puffed up during cooking, then sank on cooling, leaving a high rim around the edges and making it difficult to spread the chocolate evenly. I checked my previous recipe using Lotus biscuit spread and noticed that it was quite similar in quantities of ingredients but didn't add any raising agents, which would have prevented the dough puffing up during baking, and kept a more level top. A slightly more firmer cookie would have also given a better texture - this was a little fragile. However, the flavour combination of plain chocolate and peanuts with the caramel and spice notes of the biscuit spread was excellent.

The other minor problem, which affected the appearance rather than the flavour, was that I covered the bars before photographing them, and the next day the chocolate topping had funny little circles on it. I suspect this was due to condensation, even though I thought the bars were completely cold before covering them.

Although these cookie bars weren't perfect, I think they made good use of two traditional Belgian foods - and would probably be enjoyed by any chocolate loving Belgian!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares

I chose this recipe from a recently bought cookbook (1001 Cupcakes, Cookies & Other Tempting Treats - by Susanna Tee), and didn't realise until I had completely filled a 20 x 30cm shallow tin to the brim, just how big it was. For about the first time ever, I cut this bake into more portions than recommended, and still daren't even guess at the calories in each piece. Fortunately, CT was the recipient of 2/3 of the pieces, and we were left with just 4 pieces each, to eat over four days!

This traybake is divided into three layers; the base layer contains basic cookie ingredients plus oats and nuts and is mixed to a dough with egg. The middle layer is condensed milk mixed with peanut butter and the top layer is part of the base mixture left as a crumble and mixed with chopped milk chocolate. The top streusel layer is held in place by the condensed milk as the traybake cooks.

The individual layers can just about be seen in the photographs but the whole thing comes together as a sweet, sticky, chewy treat when eaten. Despite the 350g of sugar, a whole tin of condensed milk and 300g of milk chocolate, these squares were not excessively sweet! My only criticism would be not really tasting the peanut butter, but I'm not sure if adding more to the condensed milk would affect how the recipe works.

Base and top layers - rub 225g butter into 350g plain flour and 1 teaspoon of baking powder. Mix in 350g light brown muscovado sugar, 175g rolled oats and 70g chopped nuts (I used almonds, hazelnuts and pistachios). Set aside 1/4 of the mixture and mix an egg into the larger portion (it will still be crumbly). Spread this part of the mixture evenly into a 20 x 30cm x 3cm deep baking tin and press down to bind. Bake at 180C for 15 minutes. Meanwhile mix 300g chopped milk chocolate into the reserved oat and nut mixture.
Middle layer - mix 70g chunky peanut butter into a 400g tin of condensed milk.

When the base is cooked, pour over the condensed milk mix and spread evenly. Sprinkle the reserved crumb and chocolate mix over this, trying to place the chocolate chunks evenly, and press down lightly. Bake for another 20 minutes. Cool completely before cutting into 20 - 24 pieces (leave as long as possible - chocolate stays soft for a surprisingly long time!)

Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting

They say a picture paints a thousand words, and it's certainly true that you only need to look at this picture for an explanation of why I don't often bother with making cupcakes - what a mess! That's also the reason why I was going to ignore National Cupcake Week, but I had this flavour idea going around in my head which I thought would only work well as a cupcake. So, in the sprit of cupcake cameraderie, here are my

Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting

Ingredients

Cupcakes - makes 12
130g SR flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

90g unsalted butter - softened

110g caster sugar

2 medium eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

 90g smooth peanut butter

2 tablespoons natural Greek yogurt

25g each plain chocolate and butterscotch chips

Frosting
70g unsalted butter - softened
140g icing sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa
1 tablespoon hot water
50g plain 70% chocolate - melted

Method
Preheat oven to 180C, place 12 muffin cases into the holes in a muffin tin.
Sift flour together with salt and bicarbonate of soda.
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Beat in the eggs, one at a time, with a teaspoon of flour to prevent curdling.
Next, beat in the peanut butter, yogurt and vanilla extract.
Fold in the rest of the flour, followed by the chocolate and butterscotch chips.
Divide the mixture equally between the paper cases, then bake for about 20-25 minutes until risen and firm.
Cool on a wire rack.
Make the frosting by beating the butter with the sifted icing sugar and cocoa, and the water until light and fluffy. Then beat in the melted chcolate. Spread or pipe the frosting over the cooled cupcakes. (If you want to pipe a thick swirl you will need more frosting than this - probably double the amount!)

The caramel flavour of the butterscotch chips really enhances the peanut butter flavour, while the chocolate frosting adds a creamy richness that you don't get from the light sponge of the cupcakes.

This recipe was inspired, in part, by Martha Stewart's recipe for Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting and Jelly

ps -  the winning cupcakes on the National Cupcake Day link look fabulous! Shows how much difference a piping bag makes!

Reprise - Chocolate Peanut Buddy Bars

We're having very unseasonable weather here. From day to day it can change from hot and sunny, with temperatures much higher than normal, to days when it is cold, dreary and wet. On the hot days, I don't even want to be in the kitchen. On the cold days I want to cook winter food!

I cooked these Chocolate Peanut Buddy Bars again on one of the hot days, as it's probably one of the quickest recipes to put together that I know, so minimising the time spent in my hot south facing kitchen. It took me longer to chop the chocolate than it took to mix the dough! As I've said in a previous post, I make these with plain chocolate. This time I used 250g chocolate with 85% cocoa solids in the dough mix, and 100g of 70% chocolate on top. The topping was a bit on the mean side - in future I will use 150g.

These make a really good bar cookie - soft and crumbly, tasting quite strongly of peanut butter and with lovely large chunks of dark, bitter chocolate inside. They are one of my favourite bars when made this way, but I think they would be too sweet for my taste with milk chocolate.

On one of the recent cold days I found a small pack of gooseberries in the freezer; not enough on their own to do anything with, but they needed using before the start of the new season. On impulse I added some fresh pineapple cut into chunks the same size as the gooseberries, and made a fruit crumble, which we ate hot with natural Greek yogurt. It was a surprisingly successful combination, as both fruits have a degree of tartness, but pineapple also has some natural sweetness too. Here, neither flavour dominated, but complimented each other well.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Marbled Brownies

These are what I call cakey brownies, rather than the dense, chewy sort. There's a place for both, but I really prefer the dense, chewy, chocolate-laden ones.


Having decided on Peanut Butter Brownies, I chose this recipe from Kitchen Travels, after spending quite a long time searching for recipes online. I think it was the gorgeous photos which won me over, as well as the fact that many of the other recipes used chocolate chips in a peanutty cake. I wondered about adding melted chocolate to the chocolate portion of the batter, but decided that anything too chocolatey might overwhelm the peanut butter flavour. The only change I made in the end was to use only white flour, as that's all I had. I needed to add a little milk to the chocolate batter to make it spreadable, but the peanut batter didn't need any extra liquid.

The end result was a good balance of flavours between chocolate and peanut butter, and a well textured moist cake.

Peanut Butter Marble Cake

It's a pity that the original name for this flavour-packed cake is such an ugly mouthful - Chocolate Mocha Peanut Butter Marble Cake, although it's hard to convey all the information any other way. The peanut butter runs right through the cake batter, which is then divided in half, and one part flavoured with a mocha mixture, while chocolate chips are added to the other part.

The only change I made to the cake recipe was with the Mocha flavouring. I didn't have any Camp coffee essence, and wanted it to be more chocolatey, so I used a tablespoon of coffee granules and a tablespoon of cocoa mixed to a thick paste with a tablespoon of flour from the recipe quantity and 2 tablespoons of cold water.

I baked the cake in a 9"(22cm) springform tin, as I don't have a bundt tin - it took about 10 minutes longer to cook.



I used plain chocolate with 86% cocoa solids - I prefer using chopped chocolate bars for most cakes as I really like the irregularity of large and small pieces (right down to crumb sized).

I made a small quantitiy of frosting, rather than using the apricot glaze, by mixing about 100g icing sugar, a tablespoon of cocoa and a heaped tablespoon of smooth peanut butter to a paste with warm water, and used a piping bag to drizzle a lattice pattern over the cake.

This is a fairly heavy cake - there isn't a great deal of raising agent in the mixture - but the eggs and peanut butter keep it quite moist, and we prefer this type of cake to those with a really light airy texture, which look more substantial than they really are.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Guess what! Another Dan Lepard recipe - or almost! This time I had to tweak the ingredients a little to fit what was in my store cupboard, but the basic recipe is the same as here. I had run out of both spelt flour and ordinary wholemeal flour, didn't have enough light muscovado sugar and only had smooth peanut butter, so my ingredient list looked like this:

200g smooth peanut butter
125g slighlty salted butter
175g caster sugar
25g dark muscovado sugar
125g light muscovado sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
65g plain white flour
60g strong wholemeal bread flour
125g rolled oats
100g 72% plain chocolate - chopped quite small


I followed the recipe exactly, using an electric beater for the butters and sugars, then mixing in the flour, oats and chocolate by hand. With my 'walnut sized' lumps of dough I made 32 small cookies out of the batch; they cook to roughly 6 cm across.




The cookies are crisp on the outside but chewy to the bite and taste of peanut butter and chocolate - what more do you need to know?

Chocolate Peanut Buddy Bars

There's a quote at the top of the page where I found this recipe "Milk chocolate Morsels inside peanut butter squares. What could be better?" Well, I've found something better - plain chocolate chunks inside peanut butter squares!

I was directed to this recipe from one of the blogs on my reading list, but I've been looking at so many recently, I can't remember which one it was. Thank you anyway, whoever you are - these are quick and easy to make and really, really good!

All the recipes I found online for Chocolate Peanut Buddy Bars were identical to this one. All I did differently was use chopped plain chocolate bars - a mixture of 74% and 85% cocoa solids - and cook it in a 12 x 8" tin, slightly smaller than specified, but all I had - and a good decision as it turned out, as the bars were quite shallow, even in a smaller tin. I also put the tray back in the switched-off oven for 5 minutes to melt the chocolate topping completely.



Here's the ingredients 'translated' to metric weights:

250g peanut butter - I used smooth.
85g softened butter
280g caster sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
125g plain flour
350g chopped plain chocolate

There's no way to get 36 bars out of the tray though! I got 20 squares of a reasonable size with a 5 x 4 cut. If you wanted bar shapes a 6 x 3 cut would be about right.