Food Adventures #24: PB and J Bars

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars! Throw in some hot dish and you've got the culinary cornerstone of the Medium White North. I stumbled across a slideshow on Huffington Post's Taste section that had not one, but two but 29 fantastic yummy looking recipes for bars. I picked out two- and followed the recipe for Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars to Sally's Baking Addiction and yumtastic-ness resulted. Behold:

I was a little uncertain about these. I'd never made bars before so I was unsure about what exactly the texture should be, so after the proscribed 40 minutes when I did the fork test and got some delicious goo for my trouble, I figured I'd better leave them in the oven for a couple of more minutes to be sure. In retrospect, I think that might have been a bad move because I think I over did them a little bit. Don't get me wrong- they're nice and crispy around the edges and have the perfect solid, rich texture you'd expect from a bar in the middle- but they're also a wee bit dry around the edges as well and that concerned me a little bit.

Not having any white chocolate chips (as the recipe called for) I used dark chocolate chips with my stresel and I also wonder if I should have used a different flavor of raspberry jam. (Technically, I used 'preserves' but what the hell- 'preserves' to me is jsut a fancy way of saying of jam.) There was a lot of the raspberry flavor- but it took me awhile to bust through to the peanut butter flavor but when I got the two in combination, it was perfection itself.

These were really really good- even if I did overdo it a little bit in my zeal. Rich, decadent, gooey bars of PB and J goodness, I can give a wholehearted two thumbs up to this recipe. Especially if you're looking for some bars to make.