I’ve been wanting to try a no-bake chocolate peanut butter bar recipe  for a while and I finally got inspired to do when I saw this recipe at Our Best Bites (and they’ll soon be releasing a cookbook, by the way!).  The recipe looked so easy and so quick to prepare that I couldn’t pass it up.

I did a couple of things differently, which I’ll make a note of in case it may help others with this recipe:

First of all, I decided to halve the recipe, so I used an 8×8-inch square metal pan, and divided all the ingredient quantities in half.

Second, my main obstacle was that Australia has no graham crackers!  I substituted the graham cracker crumbs with a relatively similar-tasting biscuit made by Arnott’s – the Nice biscuit.  They can be crumbled into fine crumbs in a food processor or by bashing and rolling the biscuits in a Ziploc bag with a trusty rolling pin.

Third, the original recipe used shortening in the chocolate layer, but I don’t like shortening (and there is no shortening in Australia); the original recipe said that peanut butter could be used instead of shortening, which would keep the chocolate layer softer; I thought the peanut butter idea was a good one, but that Nutella would be even better, so I used Nutella.  Also, you may be interested to know that I used Lindt 50% chocolate.

These bars tasted almost exactly like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.  I’m tempted to use the peanut butter layer recipe to make another batch of chocolate peanut butter cups!

Do make sure that you don’t allow the bars to fully set in the refrigerator before cutting them up into individual squares – it’s best to do the cutting while the chocolate is firm, but not runny or hard.  The chocolate might crack a bit as you cut it if you leave it to fully set, which would result in a not-so-neat presentation.  My main tip in eating these bars is, if you’re storing them in the refrigerator, to let them sit at room temperature for about 15-20 minutes before enjoying them, they taste much better this way.  They’re still fine straight from the ‘fridge, but for some reason the peanut butter taste isn’t so strong.  So let them sit out of the ‘fridge for a bit and you’ll experience nearly the same awesome satisfaction you get as you bite into a Reese’s Cup!

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The chewy, chocolatey, peanut buttery taste of these cookies instantly brought back memories with the very first bite. They were super easy to make too, so I’m not sure why I’ve never made these before. Definitely these were the quickest cookies I’ve ever made!

I halved the recipe from the original and ended up with about 2 dozen, maybe a few more.

No Bake Cookies

Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 stick unsalted butter
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups old fashioned or quick cooking oats

Method:
In a heavy saucepan bring to a boil, the sugar, cocoa, butter and milk. Let boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly, then add peanut butter, vanilla and oatmeal. On a sheet of waxed paper, drop mixture by the tablespoonfuls, until cooled and hardened, about an hour.

They, of course, remain soft and pliable and chewy; which is not exactly like a normal baked cookie. But they are quite tasty and I would make these again say, if I wanted a super quick sweet treat or if the oven didn’t work…