Chocolate Pretzel Peanut Butter Bars

Halloween has come and gone and most folks probably don’t want to even think about chocolate and candy for a while. The stores have completely turned to Christmas decoration, but it’s just the beginning of November! I do have to admit that since I do so many cookies for Christmas, I have already started some of my holiday baking, but I wait until after Thanksgiving to post those recipes. There are still a few weeks of fall flavors left!

I have had this recipe pinned for a while, and I do make a lot of chocolate and peanut butter creations. This one is a little different, in that it uses chocolate covered pretzels. I like them, but they are often so dry that I don’t typically pick them up at the store. For this recipe I bought a fairly small bag, about 8 ounces, and I used the entire bag for the cookies. Ok, except for one pretzel. I ate that one. I am sure there are different brands of chocolate covered pretzels, but my store only had the Hershey ones.

Similar to most bar cookies, these are easy to put together. The dough is very sticky, so the greatest difficulty was in spreading the dough into the pan. I tried with my spatula, but that didn’t work well. I ended up wetting my hands and that worked. Sometimes your hands are the best tool there is! I wasn’t sure when the bars were fully baked. I did mine a little longer than 30 minutes and I think next time I will stick with just 30 minutes. These cut nicely and I was happy that the chocolate covered pretzels on the top of the bars didn’t shatter when I cut them.

Chocolate Pretzel Peanut Butter Bars

1 cup butter, room temperature

1 cup peanut butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups chocolate covered pretzels, chopped

About 12 chocolate covered pretzels, for topping

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9” x 13” pan with foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large mixer bowl, combine the butter, peanut butter, and sugar. Beat on medium until smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time, stirring for 1 minute after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour, baking powder, and salt. When the mixture has almost come together, add the chopped chocolate covered pretzels and stir on low until the mixture comes together.

Spread the dough evenly into the prepared pan. Randomly top with additional chocolate covered pretzels.

Bake for about 30 minutes, until the bars are set and a toothpick inserted into the bars comes out clean. Cool completely. Once cool, lift the cookie from the pan and cut into bars.

Recipe from Pretty. Simple. Sweet.