No-Bake Peanut Butter Bars

Wayne finished making all the recipes in our ancient dessert cookbook, and this summer started the next one - Old-Fashioned Bake Sale Recipes. The first recipe was Oatmeal Toffee Cookies and they were good but nothing special, (just add almond toffee bits to your regular oatmeal cookie recipe and you can try them yourself). The second recipe he tried was No-Bake Peanut Butter Bars. These were basically Buckeye Candy in bar form, and while I think I would prefer them without the chocolate chips in the middle, they were very good, and I can see them selling well at a bake sale.

As he added up the calories in this recipe, he noticed that it was "the highest calorie recipe I've ever done." That's saying alot because he's made a lot of high-calorie recipes! It turns out that there were 7,856 calories in the total recipe. Even cut into 60 pieces (so basically these were bite-size) each serving had 131 calories, or as Steven would remind us, 131 kCals each. Needless to say, we didn't gobble down the whole pan at once. And that meant that Grandpa was able to share these yummy treats with the grandchildren when they visited. They loved them!

No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars

Beat 1 1/4 cups peanut butter and 2/3 cup butter together until creamy. Beat in 1 cup powdered sugar. Stir in an additional cup of powdered sugar, 3 cups graham cracker crumbs and 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips. You may need to use your hands. Then press this mixture into a well greased 9x13" pan.

Melt 3/4 cup peanut butter and 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips together and then spread over the mixture in the pan. Refrigerate for at least one hour, or until chocolate is firm. Cut into bars. Makes 5 dozen.