Peanut Squares

All I have to say about making this Peanut Squares recipe is WOW WOW WOW! This recipe is something else! It’s definitely a bar cookie recipe, but you could also describe it as a layered cookie! It has a great cookie crust on the bottom, then chocolate chips, then brown sugar whipped with egg whites, then Spanish peanuts to top it all off. This is one sweet and delicious bar cookie!

I always like to bake bar cookies when I don’t want to spend too much time baking. Well, these Peanut Squares have so many steps, it took me almost as long to make as a regular drop cookie recipe. But as usual, the time and effort was well worth it! These Peanut Squares are an amazingly yummy cookie!

I rated this recipe as 3-stars for cookie difficulty. All the steps involved along with the spreading of the egg whites and brown sugar on the chocolate chips and cookie dough make it a little tricky. I definitely needed to focus on what I was doing to ensure I got all the steps in the right order! As with other 3-star recipes, this one isn’t hard, it just takes some time and patience.

With out knowing exactly what I was getting into, I got all my ingredients and utensils together to get started.

The dough blended together perfectly! The egg yolks give the dough such a nice and rich golden color. It has a great flavor and was just the right consistency for spreading on the jelly roll pan.

I recently bought some new jelly roll baking pans in a set of three. The recipe doesn’t specify the size of pan to use, so I asked Google which size pan is normally used when baking bar cookies. The 10” x 15” pan seemed to be the most commonly used, so that’s the one I picked!

The recipe says to spread the dough on a greased jelly roll pan. I used a liquid spray vegetable oil, but as I was spraying I realized my new pans were non-stick, so the oil really didn’t seem to do much. Next time, I’ll try some soft margarine or not use anything at all as it really didn’t seem to make a difference with the non-stick pan.

The dough spread easily!  I didn’t need any extra flour on my hands/fingers to prevent it from sticking…it really worked perfectly!

There was just enough dough to cover the jelly roll pan. I spread the dough evenly and didn’t make much of a raised crust on the edges, only because I wasn’t sure how this was going to bake. You can certainly make a raised edge if you want and I think I will next time.

The next step is to spread chocolate chips on the cookie layer. This is done before baking the cookie layer. The recipe doesn’t say how much chocolate chips to use, so I just sprinkled the chocolate chips on until it looked right. I ended up using about 1 ½ cups.

Next, I decided to pat down the chocolate chips. The recipe doesn’t mention doing this, but when I realized what was coming next, it seems to make sense to try to get the chocolate chips to stay put as much as possible. Patting them down really helped!

Moving on in the recipe, I started beating the two egg whites I had saved from earlier. Simple to do with a hand mixer. I hadn’t mixed brown sugar into egg whites before, so wasn’t really sure what was going to happen.

Nothing really happened except to make a very creamy and rich looking mixture. The brown sugar weighted down the egg whites quite a bit, but they still looked creamy and smooth. I thought the mixture was going to be sticky, but it wasn’t too bad.

I was worried about the stickiness of the egg whites and brown sugar because I new it was going to be a bit tricky to spread the mixture over the chocolate chips.

As I mentioned, it wasn’t too bad, but it did take some maneuvering to keep the chocolate chips in place and spread the egg white mixture. This is where having a crust built up around the edges of the pan might have helped.

With a little patience, I was able to spread the egg white mixture evenly and to all the edges of the pan.

The last step before baking…sprinkling the Spanish peanuts on top. When I think of Spanish peanuts, I think of Dairy Queen because when I was a kid, I used to get Peanut Buster Parfaits. What could be better than soft ice cream, hot fudge and salty and roasted Spanish peanuts on top? Not much, especially to a spoiled little kid like me ?

I had to search at the grocery store to find them and finally did right with all the regular and honey roasted peanuts.

It was finally time to get these puppies in the oven! I was a little nervous as the pan was full up to the rim with ingredients. If these guys grew any while baking, I might have an issue in my oven. At this point, I was wondering if I should have used the larger jelly roll pan?!?!?

I set the timer for 25 minutes and checked the bars a few times as they baked. They did start to raise and fluff up as they baked. I got the impression I would have to bake them longer just to make sure they were done in the middle.

When the timer when off, I took the pan out of the oven and realized they were done! The edges of the cookie crust were brown, almost too brown. The 25 minutes the perfect time!

The egg white and brown sugar topping did fluff up and over the pan edges a bit, but it didn’t over flow. Because the egg whites were fluffy not sticky, it wasn’t running or dripping. It was solid and as the bars cooled, it became a bit crispy.

I was still worried the center of the pan wasn’t done but decided to let them cool completely before I took a look.

Much to my surprise and delight, they turned out perfect!  The chocolate chips stayed in place and the egg whites and brown sugar topping seeped through to cover and sweeten everything up. The Spanish peanuts on top add just the right amount of salt and crunch to the soft, chewy, and sweet cookie and toppings. Like I said at the beginning, WOW! WOW! WOW!

These Peanut Squares weren’t the easiest to make and I was worried how they were going to turn out…but when you taste these puppies, I think you will agree they are TOTALLY worth the time and effort.

If you like a chewy, chocolatey, sweet, fluffy, crunchy, AND salty cookie…you are going to LOVE these Peanut Squares!

I hope you will try them…you won’t regret if for a minute!

XXOO!

Janet

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