Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares

Noel and I have been watching the HBO mini-series production of John Adams, and this episode is making me very sad. I won't give it away if you haven't watched the series or read the book that I referenced earlier, but it's so good and yet so sad at the same time. All in all, I have to say that it's an amazing production, I feel like the casting was generally excellent, it's well-acted, and the few historical inaccuracies are minor enough that I can overlook them. It does drag a bit in the middle (much like McCullough's massive biography did as well) but all in all it's fantastic. In order to distract myself from the sadness though I decided to start blogging while watching, so here's the new recipe I tried today.

I feel like I ought to introduce these the way book blurbs introduce new authors "if you like Mary Higgins Clark you will love Wendy Corsi Staub" etc. So, "if you like peanut butter, you'll love these chocolate peanut butter squares". I myself love a good spoonful of peanut butter, but somehow peanut butter desserts just aren't my cup of tea. I guess I think of peanut butter as more of a savory item than a sweet item? But anyway, I took a plate of these to a church function and another container to work, and they got rave reviews. They are super sweet and rich, and you definitely should not think about the number of calories they contain, but they taste quite a bit like Reese's peanut butter cups, so "if you like Reese's, you'll love my chocolate peanut butter squares".

Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares
adapted from allrecipes.com

1 3/4 cups fine graham cracker crumbs
4 cups powdered sugar
2 cups peanut butter
1 cup butter
2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips
3 tablespoons half and half

(I did mention that you don't want to think about calories right?) Ok, first of all put the cup of butter to melt over a low heat in a medium saucepan. While the butter is melting, crush enough graham crackers to make 1 3/4 cups crumbs. They need to be really, really fine, I highly recommend using a food processor to get an even crumb. It can be a little time consuming, since I had trouble eye-balling how much 1 3/4 cups was, and had to stop and measure, and then crush some more, and then stop again....but they came out perfectly. Then in a large bowl stir together the powdered sugar and the graham cracker crumbs and set aside.

Meanwhile--back to the melted butter. Remove the melted butter from heat and stir in the two cups of peanut butter until the mixture is smooth and completely peanut butter colored. Scrape this out of the pan and into the powdered sugar and crumb mixture. Then stir a lot. Once your arm is exhausted and/or the whole mixture is well-combined pat the batter into a lightly greased 9x13 inch pan and refrigerate to cool.

While the peanut butter batter is cooling, in a heat-proof bowl over a pan of boiling water melt 2 cups chocolate chips. Carefully stir the chocolate while it's melting. Once it's mostly smooth, remove the chocolate from the heat and stir in the half and half. Then spread the chocolate over the peanut butter batter. At first it won't seem like enough to cover the whole thing, but as the chocolate cools a little bit it will spread out better, and you will have enough to cover the whole pan in a thin layer of chocolate.

Then refrigerate the pan for at least half an hour before cutting into squares. I cut mine into pretty tiny squares since they're so rich, I got about fifty out of this. I think they taste a little better cold, you might want to store them in the refrigerator all the time. I'd imagine that they'd keep for several days if refrigerated, I can't really say since mine didn't hang around that long.

I think if I make it again I might spread the peanut butter thinner, into say a 10x15 pan instead, and then melt an extra 1/2 cup or so of chocolate, it would give it a higher chocolate-to-peanut butter ration, which would be fine with me. Oh, and on a total side note, if you just happen to have some homemade marshmallows sitting around, and you tried dunking one of them in the melted chocolate from this recipe, and then sandwiching it between two of the un-blitzed graham crackers you might have left, it would probably taste pretty good. I mean, I can't say for sure, but I'd imagine it would be (a) decadent and (b) irresistible and that (c) you might have to make another one. Fair warning.