Yesterday I put together this post as I was baking my PB bars. In the end, the bars didn’t turn out so well, not bad, just not as yummy as I was hoping. I pulled them out after baking for around 15 minutes and the top was golden as in my pic at the very bottom of this post. I cut the bars into 16 squares, figuring the PB flavor might be too rich for a larger serving. I used my butter knife to pry out the first bar… and it shattered into crumbly bits. Once I spooned out the crumbs, I could see the inner workings of the remaining bars. The top layer was cooked and golden, as was the bottom, but the middle still looked darker and not quite cooked through all the way. I popped the bars back in the oven for 3 minutes, cooled for 10, tried part of a bar, and it still wasn’t done. I repeated this again, except I didn’t hear my timer and the bars stayed in a little longer (~25 minutes total baking time overall) than I would have liked. In the end, they wound up looking like this:

Not the golden bars that I first pulled out. But they did cook all the way through, and despite the darkened edges, I managed not to burn them. The flavor is rather bland, not bad, just boring. When I started making the batter, I thought about adding a mashed banana as I didn’t have all the required honey/agave. I thought about adding another egg. In the end, I did not listen to my instincts and wound up with blah bars.

After baking, I thought about crumbling up the bars and toasting the pieces to make a sort of granola. Today, I decided to blend a couple of bars into a smoothie, and that turned out to be tasty. Mind you, to like this idea, you have to like shakes with brownies or cake bits blended in. I like textures in my drinks (like boba!), but not everyone does.

Here’s the smoothie recipe… adapt to your preferred liquid and protein powder.

Savior of Blah PB Bars Smoothie
~1 cup goat milk
1 small to medium banana
1 scoop chocolate protein powder (I use Life’s Basics)
2 PB bars

1. Add milk, banana and protein powder to VitaMix blender.
2. Blend on high to combine.
3. Slow the blender to the stir function and add the PB bars.
4. Only “stir” for a short amount of time to keep decent sized chunks of the bars, otherwise turn to high and they’ll get blended in so the smoothie has a batter-like consistency.

Here’s the post I started yesterday with the PB bar recipe. Maybe try following the original recipe on Celiac Chicks’ website and see if that works for you. Let me know how it turns out! I’m going to wait a bit before using 16 ounces more of my precious MaraNatha peanut butter on this recipe.

As I’ve been eating nothing but peanut butter this week (practically), I decided to make the peanut butter bars I mentioned in my Smoothie Love post. Here’s my near similar version to Celiac Chicks‘:

Gluten-Free Dairy-Free Peanut Butter Bars
2 large eggs
1/4 cup honey (’cause that’s all I had)
1/2 cup Madhava amber agave (the original recipe calls for honey, so I substituted agave, but didn’t have enough of that either, so I settled for what I did have)
2 1/2 tsp baking powder (didn’t have baking soda either so I subbed)
16 oz Maranatha Organic crunchy PB with a hint of salt (the kind you have to stir the oils into)

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. In a mixing bowl, beat together the eggs, honey and agave (I used a stick blender with the whisk attachment for all these steps).
3. Add baking powder and beat again.
4. Add peanut butter and mix together thoroughly. 
5. Press dough into an oiled (I used coconut oil) 8×8 or 9×9 square baking dish.
6. Bake for ~25 minutes.
7. Cool in pan over a cooling rack for 10 minutes, then serve.