Peanut Butter Bars

I bought a set of baking trays/pans from Wilton and this recipe was on the back of the box that held all the pans. I figured it couldn't be too bad if the leading manufacturer of baking pans had it on the back of their boxed set of pans.  I was right, these were delicious!  I will definitely make them again!  (We went to some friends house out of town for the weekend and brought these as a thank you for letting us stay at their house and they were so happy.  Our friends also loved them!)

Ingredients:
2 Square's Bakers unsweetened chocolate
3/4 Cup butter, softened
1 1/2 Cups sugar
2 Eggs
1 Cup flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt

Peanut Butter Topping:
1 Cup creamy or crunchy peanut butter (I used crunchy)
1/4 Cup powdered sugar (aka confectioners sugar)
2 Tbsp butter, softened
1 Cup peanut butter chips (found in baking section by the chocolate chips)

Chocolate Drizzle:
1 Cup chocolate chips
1/4 Cup butter softened  (I had WAY too much of the chocolate drizzle.  You could cut this whole section in half if you don't want to waste anything)

Directions:
*Preheat oven to 350*F.

*Spray bottom of a rectangular cookie pan with baking spray.

*In a small, microwave safe bowl, mix the butter and chocolate chips from the first set of ingredients.  Melt them in your microwave starting with 30 seconds.  Take out bowl, mix well, put back in microwave for 15 more seconds.  Keep doing this until it is melted.  Stirring it will melt the chocolate more, AND if you didn't know this, chocolate burns so easy in the microwave so be super careful not to burn it!

*In a mixing bowl, combine the sugar and chocolate/butter mixture.  Mix well.

*Add the eggs, salt, flour, and vanilla.  Mix well.

*Pour mixture into the baking dish and spread it out until the bottom of the pan is covered in an even mixture layer.

*Put mixture into the oven and bake 18-20 minutes.  Cool for 5 minutes in pan.

*While the mixture is cooking or cooling, make the peanut butter topping.

*To make topping, cream the peanut butter and butter in a small mixing bowl.  Now add the sugar and mix until smooth.

*Add the peanut butter chips (I chopped mine up some with a knife so they were smaller pieces) and mix well.

*After your chocolate bottom has cooled for 5 minutes, pour the peanut butter topping on top of it.  It  takes a few minutes of trying to push and pull the peanut butter to cover the top of the chocolate bottom layer, but as it touches the chocolate cake layer it sort of melts the peanut butter making it easier to move around.

*Once you have it covering the chocolate bottom layer, put the dish back in the oven and bake for another 4-5 minutes.

*Remove from the oven and re-layer the peanut butter mixture if you need too (I just made sure it was an even layer now that the peanut butter chips had melted somewhat).

*Now to make the chocolate drizzle  :)

*In a microwave safe bowl, heat the chocolate chips and butter up the same way we did the chocolate the first time.  Once the chocolate has melted, get a ziploc bag (small sandwich size), and pour the chocolate into the baggie.

*Close the ziploc bag.  Take scissors and cut a TINY corner off one of the bottom corners of the baggie.

*Its super hot to hold the bag, but hey, making pretty desserts can't be easy all the time.  So suck it up and do your ouch's and ooh's and get over it!

*Drizzle the chocolate up and down the entire length of the pan.  Now go the opposite way going up and down.  I had enough chocolate that I also did a diagonal too.

*If you have any sort of peanuts, you can chop them up and sprinkle them on top of the chocolate drizzle.

*Cool your bars down completely before cutting them up into bars/pieces.

*Refrigerate once completely cooled and cut.