Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars

Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars - made July 12, 2020 from Averie Cooks

I'm back with another bar cookie recipe. Everything I bake is all going into military care packages, lest you think I'm eating an awful lot. Okay, sometimes I am, but it's typically not what I'm blogging. Unless it's something incredibly amazingly good, in which case, I'll flag it for you.

This is something I only tried a sliver of since I wanted to pack up most of it. Peanut butter and chocolate seems to be a popular combination with military service members (or anyone besides me) and Averie Cooks is always a great source for good recipes.

So this was a natural choice as I could be fairly confident it would turn out and equally confident I wasn't likely to eat a lot of it. For peanut butter lovers, this is a good bar cookie. For peanut butter chocolate lovers, this is a great bar cookie.

The (thick) batter is easy to mix up and you don't want a thick batter to make a dense bar which is the perfect texture for a bar cookie. You definitely don't want to overbake it or it can easily be dry. The toothpick test is a little tricky since you need to test the peanut butter part without running into a chocolate chip.

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/3 heaping cup peanut butter
1 large egg
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup chocolate chips + 2 tablespoons for sprinkling

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8 x 8-inch baking pan with foil and spray lightly with nonstick cooking spray; set aside.
2. Whisk together melted butter and brown sugar until combined. Add peanut butter, egg and vanilla extract, mixing until combined and smooth. 
3. Add flour and mix until just combined. Do not overmix. Fold in 1 cup chocolate chips. Spread batter evenly into prepared pan. Sprinkle top with remaining chocolate chips.
4. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick inserted near the center (avoid the chocolate chips) comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs, not raw batter. Cool completely.