Peanut Butter Bars

How To Make Peanut Butter Bars

Beat the butter and sugars together until well-combined. Add the eggs and vanilla.

Mix in part of the peanut butter. Stir in the flour, baking soda, and salt just until incorporated and then stir in the oats.

Spread into pan and bake until golden brown. Beat the remaining peanut butter until fluffy.

This will help it spread better over the warm bars. Drop spoonfuls of peanut butter over the warm bars and spread in one direction.

To make the frosting, add the butter, milk, and cocoa powder to a saucepan. Bring to a boil.

Remove from heat and stir in vanilla and powdered sugar. Pour over bars and let cool before cutting and serving.

Tips

• Peanut Butter: Use regular peanut butter (Skippy, Jif, etc.) in this recipe. The natural peanut butters without oil and sugar don’t work well in this recipe.
• The bars are rich! The servings are fairly generous since the bars are so rich, so feel free to cut the bars into smaller servings.
• In order to keep the peanut butter from pulling up the bars, the peanut butter is whipped until light and easily spreadable. Then, the peanut butter is dropped by spoonfuls and spread to cover the bars.
• When spreading the peanut butter, going in one direction will help to keep the bars from coming up.
• Powdered Sugar: If your powdered sugar is lumpy, sift it before adding it to the frosting. This will help it mix in easily.
• Frosting: The cooked chocolate frosting takes a little longer to make than a chocolate buttercream, but it’s more true to the original bars. If you prefer buttercream, this chocolate buttercream frosting is my favorites.

Storing

I prefer to chill the bars prior to serving, but they can be served cold or at room temperature. I also store them, covered, in the fridge.

More Peanut Butter Recipes!

• Peanut Butter Cookies
• Oatmeal Cookies with Peanut Butter Filling (Doh-Si-Doh Copycats)
• Peanut Butter Frosting