Even though I love peanut butter, this is something I wasn’t super interested in trying from Baked Explorations. I think it has something to do with the fact that it’s one of the recipes in the book without a picture. I love to have a visual of something before I make it, which is why I love cooking and baking from blogs so much.
When I saw this recipe on our Baked Sunday Mornings schedule, I read it through to see if I wanted to make it. And then I read it again. And again. You have to roll out a pastry dough and fit it into a 9×13 pan? A pound of butter? Two full cups of peanut butter? Since I was in charge of treats for my friend’s daughter’s 1st birthday party yesterday, I added this to my list.
Let’s break this down layer by layer, from the bottom up.
- Sweet Tart Dough – I could already predict my inability to roll out this dough into a rectangle, so I switched it up a little bit and right after mixing I just dumped it into the pan and pressed it in. This worked *perfectly*.
- Peanut Butter Filling – I mean what’s wrong with two sticks of butter, two cups of peanut butter and some icing sugar? NOTHING.
- Strawberry Jam – The Baked boys make this treat with grape jelly, but I’m not a fan. Since strawberries have been on sale the past few weeks at my grocery store, I made some Skillet Strawberry Jam and used that.
- Crumble Topping – Yummy finish on top with oats and cinnamon.
Do I even need to testify as to how fantastic these are? My only note is that I only used one cup of jam instead of the recommended two cups and I was fine with that. I also felt that these are better served chilled, or shortly after coming out of the fridge. By the end of the birthday party, they were looking a little soggy/melty.
My final brainstorm came this afternoon when I thought about swapping out the strawberry jam for a layer of chocolate chips. My goodness.
You can find the recipe here!
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Your layers are very pretty. I’m thinking my jam layer was not thick enough to hold up my crumb topping. I put on lots, but looks like I needed more. Very nice baking!
Your layers are lovely! I pressed my dough into the pan and it worked great. Great idea with the chocolate chips!
What a great idea – these look brilliant.
Looks delicious! I wanted to do strawberry but stuck to the recipe….wish I would have done what I wanted to do!! Yours look great!
So smart to just press the dough into the pan. The roll-out part of the directions made no sense to me.
Your bars are absolutely picture perfect! These were definitely good…but I agree….best served right out of the fridge! : )
They should use your photo for the next edition of the book! I much prefer to know what something looks like, too. Yep – same great idea about adding chocolate! Have a great week!
I agree the photo usually helps me decide if I’m going to make a recipe or not. i’m really liking your choclate idea too.
just wanted to let you know that the new header looks great! just in time for spring!