Peanut Butter Crunch Bars

A few months back I was given the book '101 Things To Do With Chocolate' by Stephanie Ashcraft. Needing a sweet for church on Sunday, I decided on Peanut Butter Crunch Bars. Like most of the goodies I make, I try to use ingredients I already have in the pantry.

Peanut Butter Crunch Bars
1 box chocolate cake mix
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup creamy or crunchy peanut butter (I used crunchy for texture)

topping:
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips (can also use milk chocolate for a sweeter taste)
1/2 cup creamy or crunchy peanut butter
1 1/2 cups crispy rice cereal

I laugh a little when I look at this pic because it seems I'm promoting all these big name companies. It's just what I had on hand.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a bowl, mix together cake mix, eggs, and oil until dough forms. (It is a dense dough.) Stir in peanut butter. Spread dough evenly into a lightly greased 9 x 13-inch pan. Bake 18-20 minutes. Cool 20-25 minutes.

I used 2 8x8-inch pans and baked for 12-13 minutes.

For the topping, melt chocolate chips and peanut butter together in a saucepan over low heat. Remove from heat. (I put the chocolate chips into a microwave safe bowl and heated for 40 seconds. I added the peanut butter, mixed together and microwaved for an additional 30 seconds.) Fold cereal into melted chocolate sauce. (You want to fold cereal in order to prevent breaking it into tiny pieces.) Spread mixture evenly over bars. Cool completely and cut into bars. Makes 24 bars.


As I was measuring out the rice krispies, I poured 1 cup into the chocolate/peanut butter mixture and then measured the last half cup. After measuring and trying to be efficient, I closed up the box and forgot about the half cup of cereal. Not wanting to put it back into the box, I decided to sprinkle it on top of the bars and drizzled some chocolate syrup over the top to make it look nice. :-) Can't ever have too much chocolate.

Egg Drop Soup with Corn

There's nothing like a nice warm bowl of soup when you have a cold. During half time of the Rose Bowl game (Buckeyes won in case you haven't heard!) I made a pot of Egg Drop Soup with Corn. It's pretty basic so I winged the recipe.

Egg Drop Soup with Corn
6 cups of water
4 tablespoons of chicken bouillon (can use less sodium version)
1/4 tsp ground ginger
2 cloves minced garlic
1 can of corn (undrained)
6 additional tbs of water
3 tbs of cornstarch
3 eggs
soy sauce to taste

• Put the 6 cups of water, chicken bouillon, ginger and garlic into a pot and bring to a boil. As the water gets hot, it melts the garlic so it dissolves into the soup.
• Once it is boiling, turn it down to medium and add a can of corn, undrained.
• In a cup, mix together the 6 tbs of water with the 3 tbs of cornstarch. If you like it thicker add more cornstarch. If you like it thinner, use less. A 2 liquid to 1 cornstarch ratio works well to dissolve the cornstarch. Make sure it is mixed well because no one likes lumps.
  
• Add cornstarch slurry to pot and mix for a minute.
  
• At this point you can taste the soup and see if it needs any soy sauce. I find that with using regular chicken bouillon it is plenty salty.
  
• Now crack the 3 eggs into a separate cup and break the eggs as if making scrambled eggs. Once beaten, add to the pot. As you are adding the eggs, make sure to slowly stir in a figure 8 motion with the spoon so the eggs don't clump up into one blob. The figure 8 motion helps the egg form ribbons.

• Turn off heat and serve!
  

I've had this soup many times in Chinese restaurants and feel the corn adds another dimension to the dish. I'm all about texture in foods so the corn does this for me.