Food You Can Eat: Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares

First things first:  These are fucking awesome.  I mean, they’re not just “great”, or “really great”, but actually “HOLY SHIT I COULD EAT THESE UNTIL I PUKE AND THEN EAT THEM ALL OVER AGAIN” levels of awesome.  They are also easy and super quick to make, which makes this recipe incredibly dangerous.  Therefore, by making this recipe you hereby affirm that I cannot be held responsible for any chaos which might ensue as a result.  This includes, but is not limited to:  weight gain, high cholesterol, heart attack (Sorry, Keitel, these are not for you), stroke, temporary or permanent psychotic break, addiction, street riots, or spontaneous human combustion.

A caveat before we get started:  splurge on the good chocolate chips.  Don’t use the cheap shit private label chips, because those are mostly garbage ingredients and will result in a poor melt consistency.  Don’t even use Toll House.  Over the years, they seem to have changed their recipe because something something profits even though we’ve made our product shittier in the process, whatever.  I use the Ghirardelli semi-sweet chips now.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1 Cup Butter, melted

1 Cup Sugar

1 Cup Chunky Natural Peanut Butter (the kind you need to mix together—trust me, you don’t want to use the stuff with all the stabilizers and added sugar)

2 Cups Graham Cracker Crumbs

1 12-oz Package Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Mix together everything except the chocolate chips and spread evenly on a cookie sheet.  Be patient and gentle while spreading this crust with a rubber spatula.  It doesn’t spread easily and generally responds better to tapping down first than just spreading around.  You’ll get a feel for it.

Note the combination of tapping and spreading marks. The spreading is after the tapping.

Evenly sprinkle the chocolate chips over the top of the crust.

There’s a secret message in there. Tell me what it is and you’ll win a million bucks.

Bake for two minutes.  That’s not a typo.  You just want to melt the chips, not bake them into oblivion or caramelize the butter in the crust.  Two minutes—no more.

Remove from the oven and gently spread the chips with a rubber spatula until they create an even coating over the top of the crust.  Again, be gentle here, because it will be too easy to mash the chocolate into the crust. 

A great artiste cannot be rushed.

Place in the refrigerator, uncovered, for a minimum of 30 minutes.  When you cut it into pieces, the cooled chocolate will make it very brittle, so even cuts are not likely, so don’t worry if it doesn’t look even and perfect.  These need to stay refrigerated at all times, even after they’ve been cut and stored in another container.  The amount of butter alone means that the crust will be too soft to hold together if left out at room temp for too long.

Do your best not to eat the whole pan in one sitting.

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About butcherbakertoiletrymaker 593 Articles
When you can walk its length, and leave no trace, you will have learned.

21 Comments

  1. That looks amazing. You have given Keitel a major case of “sad that this is not food I can eat”. I will vicariously enjoy this scrumptious treat by looking at your images (pauses to wipe drool off phone).

  2. Yum. I’m going to have to decide if I want to give this a try over the peanut butter balls I usually make around the holidays. Mine are peanut butter, butter, powdered sugar, and rice krispies. Roll into balls and coat with melted chocolate (and totally agree with you on Ghirardelli chips being the correct ones to use). I do like the idea of just making it on a sheet pan and not fussing with coating balls… And graham crackers do sound like a nice addition… Tough decisions. 

  3. My grandmother used to make something very similar that she called Scotcheroos. I think she used cornflake crumbs in the base, and added butterscotch chips to the chocolate. 

  4. Yes, I realize this (absolutely necessary) request is late…butt ain’t care! So you spent a good bit of time cooking-on about chocolate, but not so much about the brand of peanut butter nor a word on the brand of those crunched-up graham crackers. I sense that choosing poorly for these two ingredients might also cause preparational problems; perhaps you might could (please) mention the exact brands you chose that produced your “Eat-Till-You-Puke” results. Thanks (in advance).

    • Well, there’s not as much at stake with the PB or the graham cracker crumbs.  As long as you’re getting the natural peanut butter (which is nothing but nuts and salt) then you’re in good shape.  I use a local brand that most people won’t find outside of New England.  As far as the crumbs are concerned, if you want to go with Honey Maid, that’s always a winner, but honestly the store brand crumbs work just as well.  The thing about the chocolate chips is that they have to melt evenly and smoothly.  The cheap chips (and even the Toll House) don’t do that.  They tend to break down rather than melt.

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