Sunday, July 15, 2012

Sweet & Salty Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Bars

Time consuming: Nope
Difficulty level: Not at all

On Friday, my husband's rugby club had their annual "skip" day. Since we're both teachers, we didn't have anything to skip but we still got to have to an awesome day with some fun people. We started the day with golf, which went much better for me than I expected.  I am terrible at golf - I only counted half my strokes and still only made par for the front nine, I guess I better stick to things I'm good at, like baking. After we played the front 9 holes, we came home, relaxed, and I prepared these babies:


After the rest of the group played the back nine, a few people came over for some drinks before we headed out for a Reds game.  The game was exciting, the Reds won, and the night ended with fireworks set to music! All in all, a great skip day!

These bars tasted great, but they were kinda hard to eat in this Ohio heat as both the top and bottom layers can get pretty melty. Next time, I might try to make a pretzel crust similar to how you'd make a graham cracker crust and then add a layer of pb and pretzels then the layer of chocolate. My favorite thing about this recipe was that it was no-bake, so I didn't have to heat up my kitchen using the oven!!

Sorry for the lack of photos, I was a little rushed because I snuck a nap in after golf and forget to snap pics as I went.

First, line an 8x8" baking pan with foil and spray with nonstick spray. Next, crush up pretzles in a food proccessor until you have fine crumbs. Some big chunks are ok, though. My mini food processor made a half cup of crumbs when I filled it with mini pretzles.


In a microwave safe bowl, melt butter. Add to pretzle crumbs, powedered sugar, and peanut butter. Mix until thoroughly combined then pat into the foil lined pan. Pop into the fridge so it can firm up a bit while you prep the chocolate.

In a microwave safe bowl (the one you melted butter in is fine), mix chocolate chips and peanut butter. Microwave in 30 second increments at half power, stirring in between, until the chocolate mixture is melted and smooth. Pour this over peanut butter layer and smooth over so that it is evenly distrubuted. Pop into the fridge or freezer until the chocolate has set. Cut, serve, and enjoy!

The recipe:
Sweet and Salty, Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel No-Bake Bars 


Ingredients:
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup peanut butter
1 1/2 cups pretzel crumbs, fine
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 tablespoons peanut butter

Directions
 1. Line 8×8 pan with foil. Spray with baking spray.

2. In a medium microwave-safe bowl, melt  butter in microwave (about 30 seconds on HIGH). Combine with pretzel crumbs, peanut butter & confectioners sugar. Spread evenly into prepared pan and refrigerate at least 10 minutes.

3. Combine semi-sweet chips and peanut butter and microwave in 30 second intervals at half power, stirring frequently until melted and smooth. Spread evenly over the peanut butter/pretzel layer and refrigerate at least one hour. Remove from pan and cut into squares.

4. Sprinkle with fine grain sea salt for an extra punch of salt to really compliment the chocolate on top. Or not. They're great either way.

This recipe is slightly adapted from Baker Lady who slightly adapted it from the Craving Chronicles.

2 comments:

  1. Do you think it would work to roll the peanut butter/pretzle mixture into small balls, chill them, and then dip them into melted chocolate?

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  2. That would be more time consuming to make but would probably turn out really cute! Maybe if you put them on sticks they'd look like cake pops!

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