Sticky Peanut Cookie Bars Recipe
By
Regan Burns
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It’s hard not to like these cookie bars, layered with caramel, peanuts, and chocolate. If you decide to give them as a gift, you might want to make two batches—they tend to disappear pretty quickly.
This recipe was featured as part of both our Chocolate Desserts photo gallery and our Picnic Recipes photo gallery.
INGREDIENTS
For the shortbread:
- 1/2 cup unsalted roasted peanuts
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 8 tablespoons cold unsalted butter (1 stick), cut into small chunks
For the topping:
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 tablespoons water
- 1/4 cup heavy cream
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup finely chopped bittersweet chocolate (about 2 ounces)
- 1 1/2 cups unsalted roasted peanuts
INSTRUCTIONS
For the shortbread:
- Heat the oven to 350°F and arrange a rack in the middle. Butter an 8-by-8-inch glass baking dish and set aside. Combine peanuts, flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until peanuts are ground and mixture is well combined. Add butter and pulse again until mixture resembles coarse meal.
- Press mixture evenly into the prepared baking dish and prick it all over with a fork. Bake until lightly golden, about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack.
For the topping:
- Combine sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of the salt, and water in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring often until sugar is completely dissolved. Continue to boil mixture, swirling the pan occasionally (but not stirring), until it turns a deep caramel color, about 8 minutes. Remove the pan from heat and carefully stir in cream and vanilla extract (mixture will bubble up and steam).
- Sprinkle chopped chocolate evenly over cooled peanut shortbread.
- Stir peanuts into caramel mixture and immediately pour over shortbread and chocolate base. Sprinkle remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt over peanut bars and allow to finish cooling. Cut into rectangles and serve.
Superb. Take it over the top with honey-roasted pnuts.
Oh my god. These are sooooo good. They are like a candy bar except like one million times better!!!!!! I added more chocolate of course, about three times as much. Maybe that's what made them over the top delicious...
I made a gluten-free vegan version of these and they came out hella good. I used oat flour and a touch of xantham gum in place of the wheat flour and some cashew creme (cashews blended with soymilk) in place of the heavy cream. The trick with the caramel is to cook it that long over a low temperature. Mine came out on the first try. Just make sure to use less table salt, if you are subbing it instead of the kosher salt...
Holy cow, I am not good at making caramel! My first try burnt, my second try turned all dry and granular because I tried to scrape the sugar off the sides of the pan (now I see why you said not to stir it). My third try sort of worked except half the caramel kind of solidified when I added the cream, so I couldn't incorporate it fully. Maybe because the cream was cold?
Okay so I made the shortbread just now but it's soft to the touch. Does it harden when it cools?
yes. we use diamond kosher salt in the test kitchen and the we need roughly 2 times the amount of table salt called for to get the same flavor. That said, you would use 1/4 teaspoon table salt here.
Oh and if I use regular salt vs. kosher salt, would it be a different amount needed for this recipe?
dinami: we've tested this recipe many times with great success with the amount of water to sugar; enjoy!
Is 2 Tablespoons of water enough for 1/2 C of sugar? Just curious, it doesn't sound like enough water to dissolve the sugar.