Pinterest Success: August 2013

Success: Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Smore's Bars

In my effort this year to try at least one Pinterest find a month, I've had some successes and some definitely NOT successes.  I'm working on catching up on some of those with posts on how the recipes went and my information on what worked and what didn't work.

Yesterday, I was preparing for a girls barbecue (with the boys and kiddos) and found this delicious looking recipe. When I saw online that folks were referring to Saturday as national Smore's day, I knew this was a great fit for the get-together.

When following the pin for the recipe, I discovered Shelly and her full blog, Cookies & Cups.  ALL of her recipes look amazing, but this one still sang to me.  For the full recipe visit her blog here: COOKIES & CUPS. She pulled the recipe from a book, Peanut Butter Comfort...by Averie Sunshine.

When we all cut into the bars after the delicious barbecue - wow.  They were so good. The recipe is right though - be sure they're chilled or they are REALLY hard to deal with.  All the gooey-deliciousness makes a huge mess.

Step one is the cookie dough.  I used a tube of cookie dough.  One whole tube lined the bottom nicely.  I didn't roll it out with a rolling pin, just squished with my hands.  Step two is the Hershey bars. Figuring cutting the bars later would be tougher, I broke them all up individually rather than using them as whole bars. It looked pretty neat too. (And no, Hershey didn't pay me anything to show off their logos like this. I just thought it was neat.)

Next was the peanut butter (yum), followed by the crumbled graham crackers.  I used a little more than a 1/2 cup and made the crumbs myself.  In fact, my little one made them by squishing, smashing and pounding on a big baggie of graham crackers.  It was pretty fun to watch.

When the recipe said it was hard to spread the fluff, they were NOT kidding. I ended up just emptying the entire jar and then trying to spread it together a bit. Still tough, but it worked in the end.

Last layer is more cookie dough..I used a break and bake package for this layer and just laid it out on floured parchment paper and squished with my hands. I should have used a bit more flour though, so I ended up having to scrape it off in chunks and spread a bit more on the top, but it all worked out.

It baked up a bit and I should have used a bigger pan, but oh my it looked amazing. Couldn't wait to break into!

Please share some of your Pinterest successes and fails too.  I'm a huge fan of the site, but it certainly does force one to balance all the pieces - work, mom, wife, amazing cook, pastry chef and all the rest.