A Dessert Perfect for Pizza Night
From Sarah Kieffer's New Book 🎉🎉
Pizza Friends, hello! And happy Friday.
If you are new here, welcome to Pizza Every Other Friday, where we celebrate all things pizza adjacent: salads, sauces, condiments, and … dessert! This is the first dessert recipe I’ve shared in this newsletter, but not the last. I’m still dying to re-create that olive oil gelato drizzled with aged balsamic I wrote about many months ago now. Soon!
Today’s recipe comes from Sarah Kieffer’s latest book 100 Afternoon Sweets. You likely know Sarah from her ripply pan-banging chocolate chip cookies or her instantly identifiable aesthetic or her other four beautiful cookbooks, which are filled with reliable, delicious recipes.
This one is no exception. Yesterday, my children had the day off from school, so we decided to bake, or actually not bake, choosing the peanut butter chocolate bars from the “No Bakes” chapter. It’s a simple recipe that in sum calls for creaming softened butter with sugar and peanut butter, then folding in corn flakes and graham crackers, both of which lend the loveliest crunch to the finished bars. After a one-hour chill in the fridge, you glaze the bars with a chocolate ganache, then chill again.
The children couldn’t have looked forward more to cutting into their creation, and when they did, they were in heaven, all agreeing that the bars tasted like Reese’s peanut butter cups but so much better.
Personally, my favorite part of this no-bake experience was measuring the ingredients, all of which are given in grams (in addition to volume). You all know I am a huge proponent of using a scale to measure, especially for ingredients like flour, which can so easily be mismeasured when using cups and spoons. But have you ever measured 1 1/3 cups of peanut butter? It’s an equally terrible experience. The joy I felt yesterday plopping peanut butter into a bowl set on a scale until it registered 286 grams was immeasurable. It’s the little things!
The finished bars can be stored in the fridge for at least 3 days, which is so nice if you are someone who likes to plan ahead. If you were making these bars for a pizza night, you could make them the same day you make your dough, getting the bulk of your prep work out of the way several days in advance.
I’ll be serving these tonight for my own little pizza night with my neighbors, one of whom is celebrating a birthday, and I’m so looking forward to it. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
Sarah Kieffer’s 100 Afternoon Sweets
Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars
Gather your ingredients:
This recipe starts by creaming the butter, brown sugar, salt, vanilla and peanut butter in stages (see the recipe for details). Then you add the corn flakes and graham crackers, followed by the confectioners’ sugar.
Beat until smooth…
… then scrape into an 8-inch pan lined with a parchment paper sling.
Chill for 1 hour.
Meanwhile, gather the glaze ingredients: chocolate, heavy cream, corn syrup.
For the glaze, you’ll heat up the heavy cream until it’s just about to boil; then you’ll pour it over the chocolate and let it sit, covered, for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes, stir in the corn syrup and whisk until smooth.
It took every ounce of restraint not to sprinkle these with flaky sea salt, but I wanted to stick to the recipe as written, which noted that the inclusion of corn flakes was both for crunch and “a salty balance.” Chill for 1 hour.
Then cut and serve!
Such a treat!
Nashville Friends?
On October 19th at 3 pm, I’ll be doing a “Pizza at Home” demo at Pizza City Fest Nashville. Comedian AJ Jacobs will be moderating the demo, and if you live nearby, I’d love to meet you! The lineup of pizza vendors all weekend looks incredible, and on Sunday, one of my pizza heroes, Justin de Leon of Appolonia’s Pizzeria in Los Angeles, is doing a pan pizza demo. His pizza is insanely delicious. Get your tickets here!
Love pizza and salad? (And dessert?!) Find recipes, tips, and tricks in Pizza Night 🍕🍕🥗🥗
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These were incredible. My husband took a bite, looked at my son, as said “You have no idea how lucky we are to have a mommy who makes things like this for us.” So thank YOU & Sarah for this easy and delicious recipe.
Sucker for all things PB+C!! These look delicious.