Munchie Monday: No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars

We have an Emergency Preparedness Fair coming up next week.  In Relief Society we were asked to donate cookies.  Since I am lazy I wanted to make bar cookies.  I asked if we could.  No problem!

 Tonight we had a potluck to get some of the final things together for the Fair.  I made these bars as a trial run.  They were well-received.

Sarah Kozowski at Sugar Apron created these bars.  She has other recipes!

No Bake Chocolate Oatmeal Bars

1 cup butter

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

1 teaspoon  vanilla extract

3 cups rolled oats

1 cup chocolate chips

1/2 cup peanut butter

Line an 8 or 9 inch square baking pan with parchment paper and set aside.  Use a 9 by 13 pan if you want thinner bars.

Melt butter and brown sugar in a large saucepan over medium heat.  When the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved stir in the vanilla and the oatmeal.  Cook over low heat 3-4 minutes or until the ingredients are well blended.

Pour half  of the oat mixture into the prepared baking pan.  Spread the mixture evenly and press down.

Melt the chocolate chips and the peanut butter in a small microwave-safe bowl for about 1 minute, or 1 1/2 minutes until you can stir them to a lovely smoothness.

Pour the chocolate mixture over the pan, reserving about 1/4 cup to drizzle over the top.

Sprinkle on the remaining half to the oatmeal mixture and tamp down with the back of a spoon.  Drizzle the remainder of the chocolate over the top.

Refrigerate 2-3 hours or overnight.

Bring to room temperature before cutting into bars.

This is Sarah's recipe, more or less the way she recorded it.

What I did differently:  I used a quarter sheet pan (more or less 9 by 13) with a Silpat liner.  After the bars had chilled for 5-6 hours, I put them on the cutting board and with the stainless dough scraper I went around the edges of the pan. I was able to then pull them out of the pan and put them naked on the nice Boos cutting board where, after they had set out for about ten minutes, I cut them into squares...about 24 pieces.  I used dark chocolate mini-chocolate chips that were just dying to be used up.  They were left over from the hot chocolate bar at the Christmas Zone Conference last year, so you know they wanted to be used up!