Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars
It’s back to school time in Boston. The little kids start up again on Wednesday here in Massachusetts. When I was young, I always got nervous before the first day of school. Maybe excited is a better word for it? Either way, I could never fall asleep the night before the first day of school. It was part anxiety about whether I’d wake up in time after enjoying sleeping in all summer and part excitement about seeing my friends every day again.
Peanut butter and jelly is such a classic nostalgic flavor combination. It can whisk anyone back to the 3rd grade lunch room. These bars do just that. They’re ooey gooey and delicious.
I originally thought I’d have enough of my homemade blueberry and strawberry jam to use in these bars. When I realized I was almost out, I let Hubby choose the jam flavor for these bars. He went with Bonne Maman Four Fruits Preserves. It’s got strawberry, raspberry, red currants, and cherries. It is a high quality jam that really did shine in these bars.
Hubby and I both agreed that we liked the middle pieces best. I usually and edge person and actually prefer corners the best. But with these bars, the peanut butter started to take over as you got closer to the edge of the pan. The center pieces had a great ratio of PB&J. If I were to make these again, I’d either add more jelly to the mix, or at least spread it further to the edge (I had read in the reviews of the recipe that if you have jelly exposed it would burn, so I was nervous about that).
What do you remember about going back to school when you were young?
One Year Ago: Fish Tacos
Three Years Ago: Spice Cupcakes
Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars
Yield: 24
Ingredients:
2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3 eggs, at room temperature
2 cups (18 ounces) creamy peanut butter
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 1/2 cups (18 ounces) raspberry jam or other jam
2/3 cups salted peanuts, coarsely chopped
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Grease a 9 by 13 by 2-inch cake pan. Line it with parchment paper, then grease and flour the pan.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar on medium speed until light yellow, about 2 minutes. With the mixer on low speed, add the vanilla, eggs, and peanut butter and mix until all ingredients are combined.
In a small bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the flour mixture to the peanut butter mixture. Mix just until combined.
Spread 2/3 of the dough into the prepared cake pan and spread over the bottom with a knife or offset spatula. Spread the jam evenly over the dough. Drop small globs of the remaining dough evenly over the jam. Don't worry if all the jam isn't covered; it will spread in the oven. Sprinkle with chopped peanuts and bake for 45 minutes, until golden brown. Cool and cut into squares.
Recipe from Ina Garten
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
Looks delicious! Goat cheese & fig is a timeless flavor combination :).
Everything about these cute little bites looks amazing. I’m dreaming about all the wonderful flavors as I type right now.
Wandered over here from the Indecisive Baker blog and love it. Looking forward to reading more of your blog posts.
I love everything about this recipe!
I love ANYTHING with caramelized onion! And I’m so excited to cook with figs 🙂 These look awesome!
Sues
Figs, goat cheese and caramelized onions? Three of my favorite ingredients!
So you lost your fresh fig virginity! See, that wasn’t so bad! jk 🙂 I hope fresh fig season doesn’t fly by too quickly, I have some ideas I’d like to get to before they go away!
These look both beautiful and delicious! A great appetizer recipe to impress guests.
Beautiful combo of ingredients. I love this kind of snack!
As soon as I saw goat cheese I knew I would love these! Yum!
sounds like a nice combination of flavors
I just found all these goat cheese recipes and fainted.
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I made this for a party this past weekend and it was a huge hit! Although, I did notice the fig flavor was almost non-existent. I couldn’t find black mission figs in the markets, so I used green. I think green figs are much more bland than black mission figs, so I wouldn’t recommend making this dish unless you can find black figs.