I’ve managed to whittle my apple supply down to about only 50 pounds of apples after making two rounds of Apple Sauce, Apple Butter, Caramel Apple Dip, Apple Crisp and Mini Apple Pies. Since I’m still surrounded by apples, I knew I had to try these Peanut Butter Apple Cookie Bars when I saw them at the Diva Entertains Blog. If you are unable to eat nuts, I would imagine you could substitute Sunbutter in this recipe, but I haven’t tried it to know for sure how it would work.
Peanut Butter Apple Cookie Bars (adapted from Diva Entertains Blog)
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 1/2 cups sucanat (or brown sugar)
1/2 cup peanut butter (homemade or natural)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 cups whole wheat flour (I use freshly ground hard white wheat)
1 1/2 cups peeled and diced apples
In a large mixing bowl, stir together melted butter, peanut butter and sucanat until creamy. Add eggs, vanilla, baking powder, baking soda and salt, stirring until well combined. Mix in flour thoroughly. Fold in diced apples.
Spread dough into a 9×13 inch baking dish. Bake at 350° for 25-30 minutes or until golden. Allow bars to cool before adding the glaze.
Peanut Butter Glaze
2 cups powdered sugar (I recommend making your own with sucanat or using organic, unbleached)
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter (homemade or natural)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Combine all ingredients and beat until smooth. Drizzle or spread over the cooled bars.
As you can see, drizzling the glaze kinda led to spreading the glaze like a frosting in my case, so feel free to drizzle or spread or slop the glaze on there however you’d like. They’ll pretty much taste great no matter how you do it. :)
