Chocolate Peanut Butter Oat Bars | No-Bake + Gluten Free!

Hello loves, I'm so happy to be back after taking a little break to welcome my beautiful son, Cole, into the world. Cole was born on March 1st at a whopping eight pounds and 10 ounces, so he's a nice big boy and I've been through the last few years. weeks of doing nothing but snuggling him and it's been absolutely wonderful, that being said I'm so excited to be back in the kitchen and I have to tell you with all these sleepless nights I've been having and breastfeeding 24 hours a day I've been wishing.

chocolate

, lots of

chocolate

, so today I thought it would be fun to show you these absolutely amazing Peanut Butter Chocolate Oatmeal Bars.

Yes, they are super decadent but surprisingly simple to make and a really kid-friendly recipe if you want to get the little ones involved, let me tell you, she will be very excited to try them now to get started. I have a double boiler here so I have a heatproof glass bowl on top of about an inch of boiling water, you could also do this in the microwave if you want. I don't actually have a microwave, so I have to make it on the stove, but if you have a microwave, make it there. What I have here is about a cup of chocolate chips and I'm going to add a cup of

peanut

butter

.

I am using smooth natural

peanut

butter

in this recipe. I guess you could use crunchy peanut butter if you wanted to be totally up to you and what we want to do is let this double. The boiler melts that chocolate and we're going to keep stirring it until everything is very well incorporated and it won't take long. The other thing to keep in mind here is that the water underneath is simmering. keep it on medium low heat and no higher, you probably already know that chocolate and peanut butter are definitely one of my favorite flavor combinations of all time, what's not to love people, they will love them.

I'm sure Cole would love them too if It wasn't such a small advantage of being the oldest kid, now you get extra years of treats, as soon as everything is well incorporated, let's take this off the heat and set it aside while we We put it to work on our oat bar crust, so to make this it's just five ingredients in my pot. I have some butter melting. I have three quarters of a cup, which is a stick and a half, if you don't want to use butter in this recipe. You could swap in some coconut oil which would probably work really well here.

I haven't tried it myself, but I have a feeling it would work well and as soon as my butter is well melted, I'll go ahead and add some brown sugar. to this, plus a good pinch of salt of course, if you're looking for the measurements for any of my recipes, you know you can always find them linked in the description box below, so fear not, you can make this recipe for yourself same. at home so what you'll notice is that at first the butter and the sugar will be separate and then as they heat up they'll become a very cohesive mixture and that's what you want so it's got that kind of caramel really beautiful.

The smell is happening and that's a good sign at this point. I'm going to go ahead and add my vanilla extract to give it a little more flavor. Be careful because it will bubble up a little bit when that happens so make sure you keep your hands at a safe distance from your pot and as soon as you have the vanilla extract mixed in I'm also going to add my oats to this so I'm going to use cooking oats In this recipe, you have the option of using either quick oats or old fashioned oats, I think the quick oats are a little nicer in terms of texture and I'm going to incorporate them very quickly into that mixture so that they don't dry out. too much and that is the base of our crust, now my friends it's time to put all this goodness together so what I have here is an 8x8 baking dish and you can see that I have lined it on both sides with a little bit of parchment paper, this will make your life so pleasant.

It's so much easier when it comes time to take this out of the pan and cut it into squares, and as you know, I want to make life in the kitchen easier. I'm just going to use a measuring cup to pile about two-thirds of my mixture onto my plate and then I'm going to use the measuring cup to press this down and create a nice, even layer that's packed really well now, if you don't like the combination of chocolate and peanut butter, I should mention that you can use this. Same technique to create fruit-flavored oat

bars

, like blueberry or raspberry.

I actually have an amazing Raspberry Oatmeal Bar recipe on the channel and it's one of the most Instagrammable recipes I've ever made, so you guys made plenty of it and sent it to me. photos and of course I love it so if you've never tried that recipe I'll link it in the description box below. Oh my goodness, they are so delicious, especially when raspberries come into season once you have that first layer. below you can go ahead and add your chocolate peanut butter layer so I'm going to take about three quarters of my chocolate peanut butter mixture and what I'm going to do is use my spatula to smooth it out until I get a nice even layer. all over that crumble so that our oat mixture is cold enough to handle, which is good and basically we just want to create this amazing crumble topping and I'm going to do it with my hands to make sure it's nice and you still have this nice part crispy top, a nice kind of chocolate center and then a nice firm bottom here, quick hand wash and then we're going to finish this off with some chocolate, you can always do this with a pastry bag if you have one on hand, but if you're like me and you like to take shortcuts in the kitchen go ahead and use a zip lock bag just cut the tip off it makes life totally easy and I'm just going to add my little drizzle on top because clearly what we need.

In our lives right now there is more chocolate, there is never enough, now they are ready to set and the good thing about this recipe is that it is actually a no-

bake

recipe, so we are not going to put it in the oven to set. We're actually just going to put it in the refrigerator or

free

zer and we want to let it cool completely and that's going to help the chocolate set up really well and make them really easy to cut, so after about two hours in the refrigerator, this delight. It's ready to be cut into squares and devoured, let's be serious, now what I'm going to do is just use my handy dandy wings to place them on a cutting board like this and then I'm just going to use a nice sharp knife to cut them into squares, guys, They look amazing, no they should be guys, I can't begin to tell you what an amazing dessert you make, they are sweet, crunchy, have so much chocolate and peanut butter flavor.

Of course, it means they are absolutely delicious. I hope you try them for yourself and if you do, be sure to tweet me, send me a photo on Instagram or Facebook because you know how much I love seeing your cooking creations. Please note that this recipe is linked in the description box below so you can find it there and finally, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe because there are so many more deliciousnesses where this came from.