Peanut Butter & Chocolate Bars

One of my favourite things is Reese's peanut butter cups - they're the kind of thing I can eat myself sick on - so I try to minimize temptation by never buying them!  Unfortunately I found this recipe that looked so easy, oh man.  Dangerous.  Don't make this recipe if you aren't prepared to eat a crazy amount of peanut butter and chocolate.  Although, technically they are a quarter peanut butter so that's pretty healthy right?  :)

The original recipe is from Cast Sugar.   Basically you just make the filling (no bake!), then melt chocolate chips (or dipping chocolate) and put together, so there are a bunch of ways you can do it:

1) Use a candy mold or a mini cupcake tin to make fun shapes
~pour melted chocolate into form, chill in freezer until set, add a bit of filling (not out to the edges) - chill, pour melted chocolate on top of that and let set in the freezer
2) Chill the mixture and roll it into little balls, then freeze for a bit, then dunk in melted chocolate - chill in freezer until set
3) Make bars - this is by far the easiest and less time consuming option.

I really wanted to make cute little shapes but I don't have anything that I could re-purpose into molds, and my only cupcake tray has just 6 spots so that would have taken too long.

The truffle ones (like the one on Cast Sugar) are pretty awesome, but they are super time consuming.  I did about half the batch like this first.  I even tried molding them by hand into hearts, but it took waaaay too long, and I got really bored, and this recipe makes a ton, so I decided to make bars instead.

For bars you just melt some chocolate, pour it into a casserole dish (lined with parchment paper! this is important!) then you let that set in the freezer.  Next, smooth the peanut butter filling over the hardened chocolate.  I think this would go way smoother if you melt the filling a bit (just microwave it or something so it sort of pours).  But I don't have a microwave so I just smooshed it around with my fingers which was also pretty great.  Then chill in the freezer while you melt some more chocolate.  Pour this chocolate over the filling and freeze again.  It's also easier to cut them before they fully harden.  I etched hearts into mine because I'm cheesy like that.

Recipe (this made a 13X9 pan of bars and about 3 dozen individual ones...so you could easily halve it):

2 cups peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)
2 cups icing sugar
2 cups crushed graham crackers
1/4 cup butter, softened
dipping chocolate (I use chocolate chips and vegetable oil)

That's it!  Then you just mix the peanut butter, icing sugar, crackers and butter together until it makes a crumby mixture.  I substituted butter cookies and just smashed them into crumbs using a ziploc and my rolling pin (wine bottle).  They tasted great - I think they are just there to make the texture a bit drier like Reese's - to soak up some of the peanut butter oil.

Melting Chocolate:
I'm no chocolate expert - I can't be bothered to temper it properly, and usually it siezes on me. So I use a shortcut that I think works just great...for every cup of chocolate chips, add 1 Tbsp of oil (not one with a strong flavour) and then just stir over simmering water until it's melted.

To finish, follow one of the above methods to make shapes, balls or bars.  Enjoy!