I feel guilty for this weeks pun I must admit. It’s totally just a well known and completely stolen joke. However it was so fitting I felt I had no choice. Although I suppose one could make the argument that that’s like a thief saying “That bank was just right there, it’s like they were asking to be robbed. Completely not my fault.” 😉
I feel like there’s been a drastic lack of peanuts and/ or peanut butter in my life lately. I knew that I had to make up for this extremely tragic reduction of the greatest nut of all time (next to me of course 😉 ), because I would really hate it if the peanut industry went out of business due to my slacking off in the usage of said deliciousness. To remedy this, I decided that I needed to resolve to completely overdose on all things peanut. They say you can’t catch up on sleep by just trying to sleep a little extra on the weekends, but where peanuts and peanut butter are concerned, I’m hoping that that is completely not the case. Although in reality, there is no catching up on peanuts and/ or peanut butter either because you can never really have enough 😉 .
Every delicious layer of these are hyped up on peanut butter to the…EXTREME!!!!! Regular flour in the cookie base? Ridiculous waste of an ingredient. Replace that concept with peanut butter powder, and now you’re cooking with gas…err…peanut butter. Marshmallows and peanut butter? Who doesn’t love that brainchild? Crazy people, that’s who. But since in all likelihood, they’re busy petitioning the government for a crackdown on all things peanut butter with the oh-so-strong argument that “I don’t like it! And…uh…it has the word “pea” in it! Where’s the CRTC ban on that? Think of the children!!! The Children!!!!!” (Awesome side note here, in trying to come up with ideas for what would constitute an anti-peanut butter argument, I found this great wiki page). No need to panic though people as I’m sure this argument will never hold water. Unless you’re panicking in a fun way like this:
…remember that game? No? Oh…I guess I’m just old then 🙁 .
Anywho, these squares of joy also incorporated my bit of leftover bourbon salted caramel from the other week, as well as peanuts, corn flakes, toasted coconut, maple syrup. Really, just imagine everything you love (or that I love) and mash it all together in a bar…they may not look pretty, but they taste pretty damn awesome. Just look at all those layers, don’t you just want to sink your teeth into that right now? In fact, why are you even still reading this – get out your baking equipment and get on this!
Yield: 16 large bars or 25 smaller bars
Ingredients: Peanut Butter Cookie Base
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1/2 cup PB2 or powdered peanut butter/ peanut flour
- 1/4 cup icing sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/3 cup peanut butter
- 1/4 cup vegan butter
- 1/4 cup coconut oil
Ingredients: Marshmallow Filling
- 1 10oz bag vegan marshmallows (I used mini marshmallows, but feel free to use whatever you have/ can find)
- 1/4 cup bourbon salted caramel (optional)
Ingredients: Peanuty Topping
- 1/2 cup peanut butter
- 1 1/2 tablespoons icing sugar
- 2 tablespoon maple syrup
- 1/4 cup of honey (or agave or corn syrup)
- 2 1/2 tablespoons coconut oil
- 1/4 cup melted vegan butter
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups corn flakes
- 1 1/2 cups peanuts
- 2/3 cup toasted coconut
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350°F and lightly grease (or line with parchment paper) an 8×8 baking dish.
- In a large bowl, sift together the flour, powdered peanut butter, icing sugar and baking powder.
- Stir in the remaining ingredients (brown sugar, peanut butter, butter and coconut oil) until fully combined.
- Press into the bottom of your baking dish and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until it just begins to brown at the edges.
- If using, pour the bourbon salted caramel over the peanut butter cookie base and tilt baking dish to distribute evenly. Top with marshamallows.
- Return pan to the oven for another 5-6 minutes (until some/ any of the marshmallows begin to brown, you don’t need them to be toasted).
- In a large bowl, mix together the peanut butter, icing sugar, maple syrup, honey, coconut oil and vegan butter. If it’s not coming together very well, microwave in 30 second increments to liquify it a little bit and make stirring easier.
- Add in the vanilla, then stir in the corn flakes, peanuts and toasted coconut.
- Pour and evenly spread over the top of the marshmallow mixture as best you can (you may not need to use all of the topping. I had some leftover, so I just placed tablespoon sized dollops on some waxed paper and froze them to make mini peanut topping cookie chews. They were also delicious).
- Refrigerate for a few hours or overnight before cutting into bars.
- Store in the refrigerator.
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