By Kevin Williams
When you have a 19-month old and you want to bake something, "stir and bake" is pretty much the only option. The other night I thought baby Beatrice and I would try making some "Amish peanut butter bars" with "peanut butter frosting."
The problem with this 19-month-old, and I suspect most, is you have a very narrow window of time to accomplish anything before they lose interest and want to move on. While these bars turned out well, they'll turn out even better when you make them. SIGH, first the recipe said "shortening"...well, geez, liquid vegetable oil? Butter? Crisco? What kind of shortening....You use a solid it'll bake up fluffier like cake, use a liquid shortening and you get a denser bar. I like a denser bar and all I had was liquid shortening,but it would have been nice for the recipe to clarify. The baking time on my copy of the recipe was wrong. It said 6 - 7 minutes. Definitely wrong. And, DOUBLE SIGH, this was my fault, in my haste to get started, I checked the fridge and saw we had no eggs. I've heard ¼ cup of unsweetened applesauce will sub for an egg. I did have that, so I used unsweetened applesauce only for me to discover later that we actually did have eggs. So this might have turned out differently if I had used eggs. So with all these strikes against us, a squalling baby, applesauce for eggs, a wrong baking time, and uncertain shortening and they still turned out good, think what these could be like for if you leisurely made them in your kitchen.
Oh, another thing to keep in mind, the original recipe says do them in a 10 X 15 pan, but I did a 9 X 13....I didn't have a 10 X 15.
The "bar batter" pats into the pan....
Stirring the frosting....
The bars look really great, bake nicely once they are out of the oven.
Peanut Butter Bars - the recipe does not call for chocolate chips, but I sprinkled a few on anyway...
Amish Peanut Butter Bars
Ingredients
- 1 cup of brown sugar
- ½ cup shortening
- ½ cup peanut butter
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 1 ½ cups flour
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- ½ cup oatmeal
- Frosting:
- 2 tbsp. butter
- 2 tbsp. peanut butter
- 1 ½ cup powdered sugar
- dash salt
- 2 ½ tbsp. milk
Instructions
- Mix ingredients together. Press into a 10x15 pan. Bake at 375 for 20 minutes. Mix frosting in a saucepan, cook until thick and creamy. Frost bars while still hot. Cool and serve
Four other Amish peanut butter favorites!
PEANUT BUTTER PIE: Really, there are few better confections than a silky, smooth, peanut buttery peanut butter pie....just amazing....best peanut butter pie is at Yoder's Restaurant in Sarasota, Florida or the Home Place, Mennonite bakery in Georgetown, Ohio. Click here!
PEANUT BUTTER PUDDING: Mmmmm, this may be the best-sounding dessert of all time, if you are like me and love peanut butter. Amazing pudding!
PEANUT BUTTER CUP CAKE: Holy cow! Click here.
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