These Peanut Butter and Jelly bars came out of nowhere. I agreed to make some sort of treat for the office when they hit a goal. The recipient would get a treat themed as the prize according to their role during our event. I hadn’t thought out what I’d make and figured I’d wing it when it happened. Welp. It happened earlier than I thought (which was a good thing) and SOMEHOW I was able to whip these babies up with ingredients at home.

On our event, the participants, volunteers, and staff go bananas over these gramwiches. They seem to only be available in huuuuge quantities (like catering quantities, not even wholesale quantities). I attempted a homemade version and they were amazing. Maybe we were just starved and up to our eyeballs in calls/emails/etc but these seemed perfect. I’m not a big baker so that’s precisely why I don’t need to be humble about these babies. Stellar.

Adapted from Ina Garten’s Peanut Butter & Jelly Bars

Ingredients:

2 sticks butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup peanut butter chips
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup jam (I used strawberry)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/2 tsp cinnamon
5 graham crackers, crumbled

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350-degrees and grease a 9×9 baking pan.
Using a stand mixer, mix 1 stick of butter, sugar, and vanilla for about 2 minutes.
Add peanut butter, eggs and mix until combined, scraping down the sides.
Mixing on low, add flour, baking powder, and salt until combined.

Add peanut butter chips and mix by hand.
Press into the bottom of the baking pan.

Top with jam.

Melt other stick of butter and mix with brown sugar, oatmeal, cinnamon, and graham crackers into a crumble.

Add topping to the pan.
Bake for 30 minutes. Allow to cool before cutting.

These were so good. You know what makes them this good? The butter. The topping was so good because all good things have butter in them. It makes such a difference.

I totally need to make these again. I’d probably up the jelly ratio…and maybe I’d double the batch.