Chocolate Chocolate and More!

Welcome to my baking adventures.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Snacks

There is no better combination than Chocolate and Peanut Butter.

“You got your peanut butter in my chocolate, no, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter.”

Who cares, I’m just glad they got together!

And lately I’ve seen a lot of this team showing up on Pinterest and Link Parties from bloggers. And of course I’ve got chocolate around the house, and who doesn’t have a jar or two of peanut butter in the cabinet?

So in the interest of science, I figured I’d better do some research. It’s a terrible job but someone has to do it.

Chocolate covered Peanut Butter Crackers
inspired by With a grateful Prayer and a Thankful Heart
and Mommy Made from Scratch

Both of these bloggers did a variation on this treat but after experimenting (the sacrifices I make for science)
This is the best!

1 sleeve Ritz crackers
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup powdered sugar
candy bark or candy melts

Combine peanut butter and powdered sugar until smooth.

Spread a generous amount onto the unsalted side of the cracker

Place onto unsalted side of a plain cracker. (salted sides out for both crackers)

repeat with remaining crackers.

You’ll have one cracker left over. I think Ritz does this on purpose because they know one cracker is likely to get broken or chipped in shipping. Take this sad, lonely cracker and dip in the peanut butter

and eat it.

Place sandwiches in the fridge or freezer for 10-20 minutes, just to make sure peanut butter is firm.

Melt your candy bark or melts, using either a double boiler or the microwave. Or a small crock pot (that’s what I usually use. You all know how to do this.

And dip your cracker sandwiches in the chocolate. Give them a good coating. you know you want too.

Place on baking sheet lined with waxed paper and let set up.

Now if I haven’t convinced you yet to go out and get a few of these bottles, go back to this post .

With a few quick waves of your hand, you turn plain into pretty, in seconds.

These crackers are a WINNER! Fast easy and they taste really, really good! You might want to make 2 sleeves because these babies disappeared really fast!

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
adapted from Flour me with Love

Lisa over at Flour me with Love made some beautiful heart shaped peanut butter candies for Valentine’s. And they looked so good. And I love Reese’s, especially the shaped ones for holidays. I think they are fresher than the regular ones in the paper cups.

So I started out following her recipe, but the peanut butter dough seemed really dry to me.

And I stopped before I put the full 4 cups of sugar in (I stopped at 3)

But I’d made this stuff so I continued. Using a one teaspoon and a 1 tablespoon spoons to make mounds of the mixture

I then lined mini muffin tins with liners, placed a teaspoon full of the melted candy bark in the bottom

Then added the peanut butter mound

Then covered with more chocolate

They were dry, in my opinion.

So I mixed up
1 cup of peanut butter
and 3/4 cup of powdered sugar
and I placed that into each of the muffin cups lined with paper and already filled with the starter chocolate

You can see this peanut butter mixture is much softer. I let it sit for about 5 minutes (the peanut butter flattened out) before covering with more chocolate.

Peanut Butter Pretzel Bites
curiosity peaked by What Megan’s Making

Ok, I have to be honest on this one. I probably didn’t give this combination a fair try.

I tried 2 different versions.
The first one using the leftover peanut butter from the Ritz Crackers.
Peanut butter was too soft, so it was messy trying to cover them in chocolate.

The second one was the leftover peanut butter mixture from the Reese’s cups.

These didn’t thrill me, not so much due to the thickness of the peanut butter mixture, but the peanut butter taste didn’t stand out against the pretzel. Megan’s recipe has brown sugar in it, so I’ll be revisiting this idea later.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Sandwiches
adapted from Picky Palate

You want to make these for someone you care about. Like yourself.
I understand why Disney sells these. And why people buy them.

Graham Crackers-broken in half
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup powdered sugar
candy bark or candy melts

Melt your chocolate.

Place graham crackers on a wax paper lined cookie sheet.

Yes, I used both honey and chocolate graham crackers. I had to be thorough.
The chocolate ones didn’t break as nicely, but don’t let that stop you.

Proceed to dip crackers, one at a time in the chocolate

I left the small corner I used to hold the cracker without chocolate for the whole process. It made everything easier.

Be sure to let excess chocolate drip off.
Place back on wax paper and continue dipping the rest of your crackers.

If you want the chocolate to set up faster, place in the refrigerator. NOT THE FREEZER!

This is what happens when you stick them in the freezer and then maybe leave them in there for about 20 minutes while you’re folding laundry.

Combine your peanut butter and powdered sugar. then proceed to spread generously over the tops of your chocolate covered crackers.

Now spoon chocolate over the tops of your crackers.

Make sure to let excess chocolate drip off. Place back on waxed paper to set up.

And if I still haven’t convinced you to go out and get some of those little bottles…just look at the difference a little drizzled chocolate makes.

I really loved these, and they were best with the chocolate graham crackers.

A few quick notes.
Every brand of peanut butter will handle differently so gradually add your powdered sugar until you get the consistency you want. I used Skippy for all of these.

The same will be true of using candy bark or melts. If your melted chocolate feels thick, add a bit of shortening. Just a teaspoon at a time to thin it.

Oh and that leftover chocolate in the pot. I usually grab the dry roasted peanuts and make peanut clusters but this time I grabbed the pretzel sticks.

Fast, easy, and no chocolate was wasted in this experiment.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  5. Carrie says

    February 22, 2012 at 2:03 pm

    Seriously this is the best post I’ve ever seen. Chocolate PB heaven. Chocolate Grahams look like they would be my favorite. YUUUMM

  6. Robin says

    February 22, 2012 at 2:10 pm

    I make peanutbutter balls all the time and I thnk my recipe might work for your pretzels. Also I like them better than the store bought peanut butter cups. mix 1/2 C creamy peanut butter with 3 T. margarine and 1 C. powdered sugar. Hope you like it!

  9. Mary says

    February 23, 2012 at 6:08 am

    **sigh** Well. I told you I’d get to it as soon as I finished business for the day and **sigh** welllllll — I’m glad I’ve got nutella and peanut butter in the house ’cause otherwise I’d be up the creek without a paddle — everything is closed by midnight in this little town! **sigh** Tomorrow, though, I’m headed to the Pig on the way out to Pine Level and I will HAVE these graham cracker peanut butter chocolate sammiches for LUNCH! or maybe late breakfast??

    Thank you, ma’am, for the research!

  13. Tracey says

    February 23, 2012 at 8:19 pm

    These look DIVINE! Here’s a tip for the Ritz treats…if you put the peanut butter mixture into a plastic baggy (or icing bag), and cut off a small piece of a corner, then you can just pipe the filling right onto the crackers, and it’s way faster than using a knife or spatula! Thanks for sharing the idea!

  15. Miz Helen says

    February 24, 2012 at 11:58 pm

    I am drooling so much I can’t even find my keyboard. These are all awesome recipes, I don’t know which one to make first. Thank you so much for sharing with Full Plate Thursday. Hope you have a great week end and come back soon!
    Miz Helen

  17. LDH says

    February 26, 2012 at 1:59 am

    All of your treats sure do look deliciously tempting! Thanks for the link back 🙂 Your beautiful photos make it easy to follow and make your awesome, chocolaty goodies!

  18. Krista says

    February 26, 2012 at 4:36 pm

    Oh yum!! I love salt and sweet together. These look fantastic! Thanks for sharing at Church Supper. Have a blessed week & see you again next Sunday ~EMM

  20. The Shady Porch says

    February 28, 2012 at 11:46 pm

    OMGoodness…your house looks like a great place to hangout! haha! I love these recipes too, but your versions are always so pretty! Thanks for sharing at the Rock ‘N Share!

  23. Andrea says

    October 7, 2012 at 11:50 pm

    I used bottles once before, not the type you have there though, and the chocolate was burned. And I only heated in intervals. So, I didn’t do that anymore. Maybe it was the bottle? Maybe it was the microwave? Maybe I need to try again?

    • Joan Hayes says

      October 8, 2012 at 3:19 am

      If you’re not comfortable completely melting the chocolate in the microwave, you can get it started melting in there, then transfer the bottles to a pot of hot (not boiling) water to melt completely. Or you can melt the chocolate in a double boiler or crock pot then spoon the melted chocolate into the bottles, (gets a bit messy but still works!)

  28. BecHeflin says

    October 19, 2012 at 12:36 am

    BEYOND yummilicious! OMGosh… I love the idea of using a small crock pot for the chocolate, too! Do you set it on high to melt the chocolate and then turn it down, or do you set it to low right off the bat? How long does it take to melt?

    • Joan Hayes says

      October 19, 2012 at 1:27 am

      Hey Becca, I keep my crock pot set on low, but it will depend on your own crockpot. This one is about 10 years old and gets way to hot for chocolate on high, burnt chocolate is the worst! Depending on how much chocolate you’re melting, it’ll take 5-10 minutes to completely melt on low. The nice thing about a crockpot, it will hold the heat so once your chocolate is melted, you can turn it off. If needed, turn back on for a few minutes if the chocolate starts to thicken again.

  30. Angel says

    October 31, 2014 at 9:19 am

    Can you use melted chocolate chips as the dipping chcolate and all of these set good? I like the taste better than candy bark or candy melts.

    • Joan Hayes says

      November 16, 2014 at 9:20 am

      Chocolate Chips aren’t necessarily meant to set back up hard like a candy bar so I would recommend finding an almond bark or candy melt you do like. Ghirardelli has a candy making chocolate that tastes just like their candy bars, maybe try that.