Chocolate peanut squares

So, who couldn't use more chocolate in your life? Or more to the point, too much sugar?

Big sister sends me a care package every Christmas season. Now, it's not like I couldn't make the stuff she sends me but hey, this way I get a limited amount and I don't wake up New Year's Eve having lost the previous week to a diabetic coma which is what would happen if I was dumb enough to make a whole batch of any one of the things she sends me. Every December, for years, it's been somewhat predictable. Special K bars (if you want the recipe for those, tag me and I'll post) and Buckeye Balls. I don't know if the second one is coming from her living in the midwest (I almost just wrote midwaste, can't imagine where that came from) and just a hop, skip, & a jump from the Buckeye state, but this isn't anything genetic since Mom never made anything like those. If you don't know what a Buckeye Ball is, I'll save you the dirty jokes and just explain that they're basically a peanut butter and sugar ball enrobed in milk chocolate. Like Reese's peanut butter cups, only not.

Well, a couple of years ago, the care package came with an extra. Something labeled "Chocolate Peanut Squares AKA Buckeyes in a Bar." Now, Big Sis is a fine woman, and an all-round caring sister, and a dab hand in the kitchen, but calling anything that she cuts with a knife "square" is a bit of a misnomer. She can occasionally get a trapezoid going, but that's about as close as it gets. But I digress, especially since I'm not so great with knives either.

These don't taste exactly like the Buckeyes, but the texture is close, and you're less likely to get melted chocolate all over your hands when you pick one up. So if you're a fan of the Buckeyes, give this one a shot.

First layer:
2 c powdered sugar
3/4 c creamy peanut butter
2/3 c graham cracker crumbs
1/2 c butter (melted)

Topping:
2/3 c semi-sweet chocolate chips
4 1/2 t creamy peanut butter
1/2 t butter

Line a 9" squre pan with foil and butter the foil using extra butter that isn't the stuff you've pulled out for the two layers. Set the pan to the side for a moment.

In a large bowl, mix the ingredients for the first layer (make sure you're using the proper peanut butter and butter measurements, not the ones for the topping.) Spread into the prepared pan.

I'm going to digress again and wax rapturous about a great kitchen utensil somebody finally pointed out to me a few years ago. Go to your favorite hardware store and ask one of those nice kids in the weird colored aprons to point you to the putty knives. Find the cheapest plastic one you can with about a 4 inch wide blade and buy it. Don't tell the kid what you're using it for, you'll just confuse them. Take it home and wash it in very hot water with soap, and voila, you have a wonderful flat cheap spatula perfect for spreading out batters in pans or scraping up food residue off your kitchen counter. And when you chip it because that food residue was more stuck on than you thought, you're out about $2.00 instead of the whatever your local gourmet shop was going to charge for this thing. It's better than your standard rubber spatula for spreading in straight-edged pans, because you might have noticed due to the conformation of a standard rubber spatula, you're usually holding it at a weird angle to the pan and it doesn't always get in the corners well because of the curved edges.  This putty knife, you're holding directly parallel to the side of the pan farthest away from you and the edges mean it's easier to get into those corners and run along the side of the pan. See? Math--or geometry--does serve you well in the real world and my love for hardware stores isn't all that un-girly.

Back to the recipe. Now that you've used that putty knife for the first time, wash it quick. You'll need it again in a second. Make sure you dry it completely.

Combine the topping ingredients in a microwave safe bowl and heat til melted. (low power, short times, til you're certain of the exact time for this. You really, really, really don't want to burn the chocolate. Smell aside, it's just a terrible waste of chocolate.) Spread over the first layer in the pan. Refrigerate til cool.

Using the foil, assuming you've figured out the part Big Sis left out earlier which is that you should have enough of a margin of foil when you lined the pan that you haven't covered it all up with the gloop, lift the stuff out of the pan. Cut into 1" squares. (Again, Big Sis, not so much. Or somebody's managed to convince her that 1 and 2 are the same, just seen from different perspectives.)  Store in airtight container in the refrigerator.

That last bit, you get that you shouldn't really be shipping these from Texas to Florida, right? Big Sis gets away with shipping these to me in December because hey, Indiana--Alaska. They're usually frozen when I pull them out of my mailbox. And by the way, freezing doesn't seem to hurt them much, but what do I know? It's not like I've ever tasted them any other way.

But do make sure you've got an audience for these when you make them. I'm a pretty sturdy chocoholic and I can take in a lot of sweets, but even I can't do more than one of these squares (or rhombi, or parallelograms, or whatever) in a day. Maybe if they really were 1" square, I could do two. But that's it. Really. Take a few to the nice kid at the hardware store.