Peanut butter squares

After having had lots of orders of the past couple of weeks, it was quite nice to have an experimental bake this week. I'm really enjoying making different slices at the moment and am always obsessed with bakes with peanut butter in. After my baking buddy Amanda did a version of a caramel slice with hazelnut caramel on a brownie base (which were beyond divine and resulted in several long gym sessions after eating just one!) I started to wonder about other types of base and caramel.

I spent a long time looking at recipes on the interweb. The peanut butter topping was quite common, but most slices had either a brownie or shortbread base and I wanted to try something different. In the end I combined various recipes, mostly from Australia with some of my own.

The resulting slice had a chocolate and peanut biscuit base for which I used unsalted roasted peanuts. This was baked before being topped with a layer of peanut butter mixed with sugar and condensed milk and then baked, with thick crazy milk chocolate on top. As the peanut butter layer also needs to be baked to set it, I found it was easy to over bake the biscuit making its slightly dry and crumbly, so if you try this recipe, be aware of that. Not that it didn't taste nice! With all these lovely ingredients, how could it fail to tantalise the taste buds!

I was pleased with the outcome and will definitely make again, but I may need to go to the gym a few times before eating another slice!

Ingredients

For the biscuit base

200g baking spread

100g caster sugar

200g self-raising flour

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

80g unsalted roasted peanuts roughly chopped

For the peanut butter layer

397g can Sweetened Condensed Milk

280g crunchy peanut butter 

55g soft brown sugar

50g butter

1 egg, lightly whisked 

For the topping

200g milk chocolate

15g butter

Method

To make the biscuit base

1.     Preheat the oven to 180 C / Gas 4. Grease and line a 20cm square deep baking tin

2.     Cream together margarine and sugar until light and fluffy; stir in flour and cocoa powder

3.     Mix in the chopped peanuts so that they are well dispersed

4.     Bake in the pre-heated oven until firm around the edges for about 15 minutes

5.     Allow to cool in the tin for around 10 minutes

To make the peanut butter layer

1.     Reduce the oven to 160 C/ Gas 3

2.     In a saucepan, combine the condensed milk, peanut butter, brown sugar and butter

3.     Stir over medium–low heat until melted and smooth. Set aside to cool for 5 minutes.

4.     Whisk in egg and mix well. Pour over base.

5.     Bake for 15-20 minutes or until just set and golden. Allow to cool completely.

Add the topping

1.     Roughly break up the chocolate and add the butter

2.     Melt in the microwave in short bursts or in bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water

3.     Pour over the base layer and spread evenly. Give the tin a little shake to get a nice smooth finish

4.     Allow the chocolate to set in the fridge – this should take a few hours

Remove from the fridge and cut into the amount of pieces you would like. You can get 16 normal sized pieces or fewer of the size you’d actually like to eat!