Peanut Butter Chocolate Crunch Bars (Gluten-Free | Vegan)

We had our one year marriage celebration this past week (yaaaay!), which of course landed on one of our busiest nights. He had a 9:30pm softball game while I had a work event in the morning, which pushed my day back to about 8pm. However, it was our one year - we would make do with a small hour window of time.

I made a quick pasta dinner, which we ended up eating in about 11.6 seconds flights beeecccaaaause...

CAKE! That is a whole one year old, just like our marriage! (However, I would like to think that our marriage has maintained and flourished with its fresh, sweet flavor, while the cake might be heading the opposite direction.)

It was, nonetheless, delicious. Because it's cake, and who cares if it's been in freezing temperatures for a year straight? Not homegirl.

Anyways, the moral of the story here is that when you celebrate your anniversary and your husband leaves you for California at 3:45am the following morning, you do NOT whine and throw a pitiful fit. Oh no. Don't do that. It gets you nowhere.

Instead, embrace the fact that you have 3 days to listen to your songs at top volume while making endless messes in the kitchen, which are your messes only that you get to clean up.

End result? Chocolate peanut butter bars.

  

 

The second I saw this recipe pop up in my Google Reader I knew - those will be mine. And it was as menacing as that reads.

As you can imagine, the marriage of peanut butter and chocolate deserves to be celebrated on an annual basis.

Wait...is there a chocolate and peanut butter anniversary? Have I been skimping on an important holiday my past 26 years? If that was the case, I would need to make up for lost time. 26 days of chocolate peanut butter for all the household! (=2 people. Can I order a new, larger, wardrobe with that?)

I'm sure I don't need to get into it, but I will. These are delicious. I scaled back on the sugar and added in the last handful of un-crunched rice crispies at the end, but other than that I made no changes to this recipe...and you can see the grand product. Just awful. You should probably just make them and bring them over to me to eat for you.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Crunch Bars
from Peas and Thank You

1/2 cup vegan margarine or butter, melted
1/2 cup and later 2 T creamy peanut butter
1.5 cups and later 1/2 cup whole rice crispies
1/2 cup oats
3/4 cup powdered sugar
2/3 cup chocolate chips

1. Crunch up 1/5 cups of the rice crispies nice and good; add to a large mixing bowl with the melted butter, 1/2 cup peanut butter, oats and powdered sugar. Combine fully, and stir in the last 1/2 cup un-crushed rice crispies.

2. Push down into an 8 x 8 or similar-sized dish and flatten on top.

3. In the microwave, melt together the chocolate chips and last 2 T ob peanut butter in 30-second intervals, stirring in between. Pour over the batter, spread evenly, and refrigerate until set. Eat and drool.