Today on Sugar Spun Run, we will be making peanut butter s’mores bars.
Hey Sugar Spun Bakers, Sam here!
And today, I am so excited to be sharing another carefully tested, well researched,
and perfected recipe.
If you are a peanut butter and chocolate lover, you are going to absolutely adore today's recipe.
It's super simple, so let's go ahead
and get start by preheating our oven to three hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit.
You may notice I am in a slightly different kitchen today.
I did not get a remodel. I am in my friend and sort of neighbor Jessica's house.
Jessica from Savory Experiments has lent me her kitchen,
and I'm super grateful for that, so, if you're wondering,
no kitchen remodel. So our first ingredient we're going to need
today is one cup of softened, unsalted butter.
We're just going to drop this in a large mixing bowl.
And this butter should be close to room temperature,
but you don't want it to be super melty or oily when you use it.
The next thing we're going to add is one cup of creamy peanut butter.
I suppose you could use crunchy, that would be fine,
but I would recommend staying away from a natural peanut butter.
You know the kind where the oil separates on top.
Unfortunately, that can really mess with the texture of your baked goods.
It will really dry them out, make them crumbling and fall apart,
so just stick with the generic, store bought creamy peanut butter.
Next, we're going to add our sugar. I use a cup of granulated sugar
along with a cup of firmly packed brown sugar.
Light brown sugar or dark brown would work well here.
If you use dark brown, the bars are going to come out a little bit sweeter,
a little bit richer, and a little bit darker in color,
but either will work really well here.
So for today's recipe, I recommend using an electric mixer or a stand mixer.
We're going to be creaming our ingredients together,
and that's a little bit much to do by hand, so grab your mixer.
We'll cream everything together until it’s smooth, creamy,
well combined.
Ah! Please make sure your beaters are attached first.
Once your beaters are securely attached, we will now cream together our ingredients.
Okay, so the butter's looking pretty good, nicely creamed.
So the next thing we're going to need is two large eggs. I recommend your eggs being room
temperature. That's just going to help your ingredients combine better,
makes it a little bit easier on you. So we'll do one large egg,
and you should always crack your egg in a separate bowl just in case you get any shell in there
or just in case the egg is bad.
I don't know if you've ever run into that, but it's awful. You don't wanna put that in your batter.
So first the egg, and then we'll do our egg yolk.
And the reason I do just the egg yolk
for the second egg is because I want these to be nice and tender.
I don't want them to be too cakey. I hate a cakey cookie bar.
And adding that extra egg white, it would do that.
It would it would make it a little bit too cakey and too dry for my liking.
So just the egg and egg yolk and we'll have nice, tender, perfectly dense cookie bars.
So actually, before I cream those in, I'm going to also add my vanilla
and you will need one and a half teaspoons of vanilla extract.
And I'm using my homemade vanilla extract.
I'll make sure to link to that in case you don't already have the recipe,
but it's so easy to make your own homemade vanilla and a lot of times it's a lot cheaper.
So we'll beat these ingredients in until everything's nicely combined.
Okay, I'm going to scrape the bowl with my spatula briefly.
I wanna check the sides and bottom
and make sure that everything's nicely incorporated
and we don't have any pockets of sugar that didn't get nicely combined or anything like that.
Now I can set this aside and we will need a separate mixing bowl for our dry ingredients.
We'll start with two and three fourth cups of all purpose flour,
And since these are s'mores bars, of course, we have to incorporate the graham cracker somehow.
Today, we'll be using a half cup of graham cracker crumbs.
So just drop these in with your flour. We'll also be adding a teaspoon of baking powder
and a teaspoon of cornstarch
and I like using cornstarch
because it's another ingredient that will keep these bars tender
and chewy without making them too cakey,
which would happen if we added more flour to help bind them together.
We'll also add three fourths teaspoon of salt,
and then we'll just whisk everything together until it's nicely combined.
This is a big whisk. Okay,
now we are going to gradually add our dry ingredients to our wet ingredients.
We do want to do this gradually. You also want to do this carefully
because this is a pretty stiff, thick batter.
I have broken a spatula before making this dough. It’s worth it,
but if you can spare your spatula, do that and spare your mixer.
So we'll just add it in about three
or four parts. Scrape off the batter on my spatula and we will slowly incorporate the flour.
You could do this by hand, but I prefer to use my mixer, just saves a little bit of an arm workout.
Let's add the last of it. Get that mixed in there.
Okay, we do have one more ingredient that we need to add.
We'll be adding two tablespoons of milk.
I like to use whole milk. That's my preference.
This is going to lighten up the batter so that it's not un-bite-into-able.
You don't want a cookie bar that's just to too dense,
so this is just gonna lighten up and make it a little bit more chewy.
We'll stir this in until it's combined.
Okay, and before we get to our mixins, which are super important,
you're going to want to scrape the sides and bottom of your bowl again.
As I said, this is a very stiff dough.
Adding the flour or the drying ingredients that gradually is key.
It has a tendency to hide in pockets on the bottom.
You want a cohesive dough. Okay,
so now let's grab our mix ins. We have two ingredients that are super important here.
I have my marshmallows and my chocolate.
Now, for the chocolate, we're going to be using milk chocolate today.
When I originally wrote this recipe, I used Hershey bars.
You can absolutely use those,
but I find that the size of the Hershey bar keeps shrinking and the cost keeps going up,
so I just use milk chocolate chips now.
If you wanna use bars, you'll need about six of them
and you'll wanna chop them up into bite sized pieces.
Now, for the milk chocolate chips, I have measured out two cups
and I'm going to add most of it, but not all of it, to the batter.
We’re going to save a little bit of that right here.
We're also going to add our marshmallows because these are s'mores bars.
Mini marshmallows work best here. I have two cups. We’ll add these as well.
And then we're going to fold everything together.
And this is where your spatula is really at risk,
so proceed with caution. You don't wanna break yours.
We're going to, by hand, fold everything together
until the chocolate and marshmallows are nicely distributed through the batter.
It's a little tricky because the marshmallow tends to fall to the bottom
and it resists incorporating into the dough a little bit,
so just don't be afraid to bully it with your spatula.
I recommend that you aim to have the marshmallows
and chocolate evenly distributed because you don't want to have them all clumped together.
Then somebody gets a bunch of marshmallow
and chocolate and somebody just gets plain cookie bar
and you will have unhappy people in your household.
Just ask my sons. I think this looks pretty good,
so now I'm going to grab my baking pan.
You'll bake today's recipe in a thirteen by nine pan. As you can see,
I have lined mine with parchment paper. If you don't have parchment paper,
just go ahead and grease yours, lightly grease it with some butter.
However, I like the parchment
because it's going to make it easy
for me to lift the bars out when they're finished baking and cut them more easily.
It is going to make spreading the dough a little bit of a pain,
but for me it's worth it. You get to decide what works best for you.
So I'll just drop this dough in here. And it's a heavy dough.
Plop that right in, and we'll spread this evenly into the baking pan.
And like I said, this part can be a little bit of a pain,
so decide for yourself whether it's worth wrestling with the parchment or not.
I’m just gonna go for it and use my hands.
Now any marshmallows that are peeking out on the surface,
they're going to swell up and they're not going to look super pretty when they're finished baking.
But they're going to taste delicious and they'll be nice and chewy and a little bit gooey.
Sometimes they'll even crisp up a little bit, which looks somewhere between messy
and rustic and perfectly the way s'mores should look.
So if you don't wanna see any marshmallow, just tuck that down underneath,
but I think it adds to the appeal. Alright,
one final smooth over. And this doesn't have to be perfect,
but you want to get it pretty even. Okay,
so remember those chocolate chips that we saved from earlier?
We're going to grab those now
and we'll just scatter them over the surface
because who doesn't like a little bit of extra chocolate.
Okay, now let's take these over to our three hundred
and fifty degree Fahrenheit preheated oven where they'll need to bake in the center rack
for about twenty five to twenty eight minutes.
What you're looking for is a toothpick inserted in the center to come out clean
or with a few crumbs.
Alright, so these have finished baking, and I've let them cool,
so now we get to use our handy dandy parchment paper sling.
And these will just lift out. Do wait
until they have cooled completely if you're going to be lifting them out.
Otherwise, they're just going to kind of collapse on you.
So now we can go ahead and dig right in.
I'm gonna cut these up into squares.
Cut myself a generous slice. Look at that marshmallow.
Look at that! So chocolatey, so marshmallowy.
I cannot wait for you guys to try these peanut butter s'mores bars.
And if you do, please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
I always love hearing from you.
Thank you guys so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.
Okay, well since I'm at my friend Jessica's house, I need to have her come on
and try one as well as my friend Amy from House of Nash Eats
who is here today. Are you guys ready for this? Yes.
I'll give you a center one. Those are the best ones.
Alright, let me know what you think. Mmm! Is it good?
Mhmm. So gooey,
the marshmallow. I'm glad you like it.