Peanut Butter No-Bake Bars
Published May 29, 2020
- Total Time
- 20 minutes, plus chilling
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
- 3tablespoons butter
- 1cup peanut butter (smooth or crunchy), or use another nut butter
- Pinch of kosher salt (optional)
- ½cup cookie crumbs, such as graham crackers or gingersnaps, or use almond flour, coconut flour or shredded coconut
- About 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
- 6ounces chocolate chips or chopped chocolate, any percentage (1 cup)
- ½tablespoon coconut oil or butter
- Flaky sea salt, shredded coconut, sliced almonds, chopped honey-roasted peanuts, or crushed pretzels, for sprinkling (optional)
For the Base
For the Topping
Preparation
- Step 1
Make the base: Heat butter in a pot or skillet, letting it melt and bubble and turn brown. It will smell nutty. Add peanut butter, and turn off the heat. (If your nut butter is unsalted, add a pinch of salt.) Stir it all around until the peanut butter melts, then stir in crumbs.
- Step 2
Sweeten the mix to taste with confectioners’ sugar. That could mean 1 cup, but try it as you go.
- Step 3
Spread the mixture into parchment or foil lined 8-by-8-inch pan, but really, any pan will work.
- Step 4
Make the topping: Add chocolate chips and coconut oil to a small pot, and melt the chocolate on the stovetop over low heat, stirring constantly. (Alternatively, add to a microwaveable bowl, and microwave in 20-second bursts, stirring in between each one.)
- Step 5
Spread the melted chocolate over the peanut butter layer. Sprinkle any of the toppings over, and refrigerate until the peanut butter and chocolate layers are set, about 1 hour or so. Cut these into bars or squares with a knife, or use cookie cutters for shapes. (Store in the refrigerator after cutting; they’ll melt in a warm room.)
Private Notes
Comments
Delicious treat! All the joy of peanut butter fudge or buckeye balls but with way less effort. Maybe this was supposed to be obvious, but you should refrigerate the peanut butter mix after you put it in the pan, before you top with chocolate. Let the base firm up. Otherwise it’s so soft that the chocolate sinks and forms a very uneven layer.
I used Rice Krispies as a binder and it turned out delicious and crunchy!
For anyone trying to reduce or sub out the powdered sugar, you may want to incorporate a tablespoon of cornstarch. Cornstarch is a component of powdered sugar and should help with setting the texture of the bottom layer so that it's not too soft/runny.
If you want to build this recipe into something more cake-adjacent, I highly recommend making the peanut butter base from this dessert and using it to top fresh-baked brownies. I used Ghirardelli double chocolate brownie mix, pouring half of the batter in, adding some blobs of plain peanut butter, then pouring the rest of the brownie batter. After the brownies cooled for about 15 minutes, I poured the peanut butter mixture over, and let it sit in the fridge a few hours before serving.
I wanted to like these because they were easy to make, but the texture was off as other comments indicated, and I found them too thin and too sweet. They are reminiscent of special K bars, but special K bars are way better - better size, texture, and not too sweet. Won’t be making again.
I topped the melted chocolate with a mixture of flake salt, coconut, and chopped peanuts. Next time, I’ll turn the chilled bars out of the pan, add this mixture to the bottom of the pan and then press the bars down into it to give the slightly soft peanut mixture a sort of bottom “crust.” These are delicious and addicting. I want to try an almond butter and dark chocolate combo next time.