Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Recipe #9: Peanut Butter Bars

Last week I had it in my head that I really wanted to make something with peanut butter, oatmeal, and chocolate.  While I did not find an official brownie recipe with these three ingredients, I did find this recipe for Peanut Butter Bars that was a suitable substitute. 


I mostly followed the recipe except that I increased the amount of oats to 1 cup as recommended by one of the reviewers of the recipe.  They were a little drier than I hoped that they would be, but otherwise the bars had a good peanut butter and oats taste.  Next time I think that I will experiment a little with the wet ingredients to see if I can make it more moist.

I also baked them in a 9x9 pan instead of a 9x13.  I was afraid they would be a little too thin in the 9x13.  I had to increase the baking time about 15 minutes to make sure they baked through.

The Review
on a scale of 1 to 5
  • Overall Rating: 3
    • Recipe Difficulty
      • Rating: 1 (easy)
      • Another basic recipe where you throw the ingredients together without any unusual or extra steps. 
    • Taste
      • Rating: 4 (pretty good)
      • The flavors balanced each other out well.  It had a good, but not overpowering, peanut butter taste.
      • I am glad I doubled the amount of oatmeal in the recipe.  The taste of the oatmeal was present but again was not overpowering.
      • I used milk chocolate chocolate chips because that is all I had in the house.  They tasted good on the top of the bars, but I would like to try it with semi-sweet or dark chocolate to get a stronger chocolate flavor without all the extra sweetness.
    • Texture
      • Rating: 3 (not terrible, but could be better)
      • As with most peanut butter recipes, I felt that these bars were a little too dry.  I would like to make them more moist and chewy.
  • Hints and tips
    • If you want to taste more of a oatmeal, double the amount called for in the recipe.
    • If you bake it in a 9x9 pan, increase the cook time to 40-45 minutes.
  • Would I make these brownies (bars) again?
    • Yes, but as I stated earlier, I plan to make changes to see if I can improve on the texture.

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