Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars

I LOVE peanut butter and jelly!  I honestly think it's one of the best food combinations around, if not THE BEST.  I could eat peanut butter and jelly everyday of my life and not get sick of it.  In fact, I usually eat pb&j a multiple days out of the week for lunch.  And I'm always eating peanut butter.  Actually, I think I might be slightly addicted to peanut butter...right now I have 5 jars of it in the pantry!  Oh well, I could be addicted to worse things, right?

Anyway, I got a Martha Stewart cookie cookbook for Christmas and saw this recipe in it.  I wanted to make it for my birthday last week, but decided not too because we had other sweets in the house, so I made it this weekend.  These bars are delicious!  If you like pb&j, then you have to try this recipe.  I could probably eat the whole pan of these....they are THAT good.  I've made these bars before, but I used Ina Garten's recipe (the Barefoot Contessa) and the recipes are almost identical.  I think one has a bit more peanut butter in it, and that's the only difference.  Both recipes are great!

In making these tasty treats, I used whole wheat flour (as usual) and chunky peanut butter (because Jerm and I are chunky peanut butter kinda people).  Als0, I cut the recipe in half and baked it in an 8x8 inch pan.  One thing to note if you do cut the recipe in half, I'd recommend a bit more than half the jelly.  Some of it gets absorbed into the base, so I think a bit more would have been perfect.  Oh and in the cookbook, Martha has some nonsense about letting the bars cool completely, and then refrigerate for an hour  or so, and then cut them!  Yea right!!  Mine we're still a bit warm when I cut into them...and they were AMAZING.

Enjoy!

Ingredients.

The dough was excellent raw!

Cut bars.

On the way into my mouth!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars, by Martha Stewart

Ingredients

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan
• 3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pan
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 1/2 cups smooth peanut butter
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups strawberry jam, or other flavor
• 2/3 cup salted peanuts, roughly chopped

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-by-13-inch pan with butter, and line the bottom with parchment paper. Grease the parchment, and coat inside of pan with flour; set aside. Place butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes. On medium speed, add eggs and peanut butter; beat until combined, about 2 minutes.
2. Whisk together salt, baking powder, and flour. Add to bowl of mixer on low speed; combine. Add vanilla. Transfer two-thirds of mixture to prepared pan; spread evenly with offset spatula. Using offset spatula, spread jam on top of peanut-butter mixture. Dollop remaining third of peanut-butter mixture on top of jam. Sprinkle with peanuts.
3. Bake until golden, about 45 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool; cut into about thirty-six 1 1/2-by-2-inch pieces.