Peanut Butter Rice Crispy Chocolate Bars

Last year on my work-cation at the beach, the great debate was about what defines a “chocolate cake”? My “Southern” friends state a chocolate cake is a yellow-based cake with chocolate frosting. Well, this year our debate centered around peanut butter. I’ll start by saying I am an “all natural”,  “crunchy” fan. Second choice is all natural creamy. I was able to get one vote for my preference, but I have a feeling the voter just wanted to stay on the good side of the chef. The rest of the group was divided almost 50/50 for Jiff creamy and Peter Pan crunchy.

In honor of those who don’t agree with me, I am offering a recipe that calls for a creamy peanut butter and, dare I say, it works better with the “non natural” brands. If you want to use all natural, drain off any extra oil that has separated out. These bars are very addictive, so make extra and freeze them, just cut before you freeze.

Bars

6 cups Rice Crispies (or off brand)

10 oz bag marshmallows

3 Tbls butter

Using microwave melt butter in glass bowl, add marshmallows and melt, stir in Rice Crispies. Spread mixture into a well greased 9 ½ x 11 dish. Let cool, may refrigerate if necessary.

Peanut butter topping

1 ½ pounds powdered sugar

1 pound peanut butter (less oily, the better)

½ pound butter (room temperature)

Place all ingredients into a bowl and combine by hand. I usually glove up and mix with my hands, otherwise the powder sugar tends to go flying. Once thoroughly mixed spread the peanut butter topping on the cooled Rice Crispies.

Chocolate topping/base

24 ounce chocolate chips melted

one square inch paraffin wax (this wax is edible) melted

You can cut and dip the bottom of the bar in chocolate, or just spread chocolate on top then cut. You can also use whatever chocolate you prefer from semi sweet to dark.

Combine ingredients, then dip (place on wax paper to cool) or spread.

Second method: temper your chocolate and proceed with desired method