Friday, July 6, 2012

By the Batch - No Bake Chocolate & Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars

The heat wave continues here in Ontario – with temps feeling like 44 with the humidex it is officially HOT! If you’re like me then the last thing you want to do in heat like this is turn your oven on. But that doesn’t mean that you need to deny your sweet tooth. Nope, in summer time I turn to no bake baking like these delicious No Bake Chocolate & Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars I saw on Gingerbread Bagels.

No Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Oat Bars 

Ingredients

3/4 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups quick cooking oats
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
2/3 cup creamy peanut butter

Directions

In a large saucepan, melt the butter over medium low heat. Add in the brown sugar and vanilla extract. Mix to combine. Add in the quick cooking oats and stir. Cook the oat mixture over medium low heat for 4 minutes.

While the oat mixture is cooking, melt the chocolate chips and peanut butter in a microwavable bowl. Then set aside.

Lightly grease an 8 by 8 inch baking pan. Press 3/4 of the oat mixture in the bottom of the pan. Pour the melted chocolate and peanut butter over the oats.

Take the remaining oat mixture and crumble it over the chocolate/peanut butter. Refrigerate the bars for at least 3 hours. Then cut into squares and serve.

These bars came together really easily and with few ingredients and they’re sweet without being too sweet. I did find that a lot of my oat mixture crumbled off into the pan when I was lifting my squares out. This may have been because I cheated and took the bars out of the fridge after only 90 minutes but I think next time I would cut back on the amount of oats used – Chris said he thought the bars were “too oat-y”. The one good thing about all those lost oats though is that they taste great mixed into yogurt!

So the next time your sweet tooth needs silencing give these bars a try or search through Pinterest for a million other no bake recipes. Next week I’ll be sharing delicious No Bake Cookie Dough Bites!

 

No comments:

Post a Comment