Friday Food Craft: "Sugar Shock" Bars

It is Friday once again, and time for another food craft. This week's craft is easy, delicious and no baking is required!! It's also pretty rich, when we were kids my sister and I referred to these as "Sugar Shock" bars, though I'm pretty sure they were supposed to be called Reese's bars or chocolate peanut butter bars. They take very few ingredients, and including refrigeration, are done in about an hour. I will warn, you probably want to cut these into pretty small squares as a little goes a long way! Also, if you want to make these into peanut butter cups, I would recommend doubling the chocolate topping and using a mini muffin tin, with hand rolled peanut butter centers. Now on to the recipe!

To make your own delicious Sugar Shock Bars you will need:

1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter (you can use crunchy if you prefer)
1 3/4 cups confectioner's sugar
1 heaping cup brown sugar, packed
4 Tablespoons melted butter


For chocolate topping:
1 cup chocolate chips (or chopped chocolate bar of your liking)
4 tablespoons butter

Mix together your peanut butter, melted butter, and both sugars until well incorporated. Pat mixture into an even layer in an 8"x8" pan. No greasing is required as the peanut butter and butter in this "dough" will keep it from sticking. I generally use a glass baking dish.

In a microwave safe bowl, melt your chocolate chips and the other 4 Tablespoons of butter at 30 second intervals. For me, it generally only needs to be microwaved for 1 minute, I find that extra stirring after this much time will melt the chocolate without lumps, but if necessary place back in microwave at 10 second intervals after 1 minute of time has elapsed. Nothing is worse than scorched chocolate. :(

Spread your chocolate layer evenly over the peanut butter layer and refrigerate for one hour. I like sweet and salty desserts, so I sprinkled a pinch of flake salt over the top of half of my bars. This is totally optional. Store in refrigerator.


I have also seen recipes similar to this where a layer of shortbread (baked of course) is used on the bottom with the peanut butter and chocolate layers then on top, but It is August and I really try to avoid baking as much as possible. It just makes the apartment too HOT. Should you try it though, let me know how that works out :)