Holy Cow that's Good!

Remember yesterday's post where I talked about about buying the Baked cookbook & WW Magazine? No brainer here, but guess which one won out? The Baked Cookbook, duh.

So as I'm leafing through the book, looking at the awesome pics and reading the recipes, which don't seem too out-there btw, the recipe for Peanut Butter Crispie Bars stares me right in the face. Could it be? Rice Crispies (or "crispy rice cereal" if we're pretending to be generic), peanut butter, and chocolate. Hey there sailor; sign me up!

But first, a little background: Baked is a bakery in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, NYC. I've followed them online (yet another hint that my life may be ever so slightly pathetic...), saw a little something on them on The Food Network, and read about them, albeit briefly, in Food & Wine mag. They opened a few years ago (January 2005) and have more or less slayed. Two guys just trying to put out excellent baked goods and make a buck. God bless them.

Anyway...

I get back from a trip to PA this afternoon anticipating (and hoping for) some bad weather. Snow days are some of the only days that I can cook for fun. Usually I make doughnuts, but today, Peanut Butter Crispy Bars are calling my name. Here's what appeals to me: The rice cripies are CANDIED (heck to the ye-ah!) before they're made a layer, so nary a marshmallow is in sight. The peanut butter/milk chocolate filling (when I die, forget the casket and just bury me in this stuff) is super-duper easy to make, and the top chocolate layer, come on, nothing could be simpler. The weather may not be working out the way I hoped, but the Crispie Bars? Oh yeahhhh.

Because of copyright laws and well, respect for the guys that wrote the book, I'm not going to give you the recipe here. However, I do recommend that you BUY the book (use the link from yesterday for 40% off) if you're into yummy baked goods that don't use a lot of freaky ingredients. Keep in mind that I've only made one of the recipes so far, but seriously...looooove it!

Here's a pic of the finished product, but keep in mind that 1. I suck at food photography or any other kind of photography and 2. I cut these much smaller than the guys who wrote the cook book recommend (some carryover from the WW thing I suppose):

What you can't do is taste the creamy, cool filling, crunch ever so slightly on those fabulous sweetened crispies, or lick off the chocolate layer on top. But you can take my word for it when I say...yum.