baking outside the box (+ a recipe!)
I’ve begun to realize that I can almost never write my way through one of these newsletters without referencing my childhood. Specific meals, restaurants, habits, traditions — I’m incapable of thinking about food without evoking memories.
And I know I’m not alone. New food’s fun and all, but old food — yellowed recipe cards and meals cooked from memory, ancient diners and ramshackle ice cream stands — keeps us hungry and happy and, more than anything, connected. When your dad tells you the beignets tasted just like this when he was in college, when your step-grandmother makes the same pistachio cake every Easter for all of eternity, when the pizza place changes hands but the thin-crust pies still taste the same — that’s what keeps us eating. Or no, actually, it’s what keeps us thinking about eating. It’s what elevates some meals above the simple act of filling our grumbling stomachs.
A few weeks ago, I got to thinking about the boxed peanut butter bars my mom would make from time to time when I was a kid. I must’ve been craving something sweet, because as soon as I recalled the bars we called “chocolate peanut butter treats,” I could think of nothing else, and I became determined to find them and bake them as quickly as I could.
I should also mention that my mom bakes like nobody’s business. She treats boxed treats like bearers of the plague, and she was always clipping recipes from Bon Appétit or hunting out the best-quality chocolate chips at the grocery. Baking is the one and only realm where she’s a bit of a snob — which is why I’m mystified as to how a Betty Crocker “premium dessert bar mix” ever appeared in our pantry.
The more I thought about the bars, the more I began to consider them a mystery. Why were they the one boxed baked good my mom experimented with or even allowed? I remembered them as being chewy and rich and exactly what 8-year-old me wanted from dessert. My brother and I begged for them whenever we saw a brown and orange box in the pantry. Were peanut butter treats just such a superior boxed product that my mom didn’t think she could do better from scratch?
That is the extent of the mythology I’d built up around a box containing three bags of powder in varying shades of tan.
My plan was this: I’d get my hands on a box of baking mix. The stuff is still for sale, in an almost identical box, which seemed to me like a testament to these bars’ place in the pantheon of sweets. Once I secured the goods, I’d also research recipes for peanut butter bars with chocolate icing and adapt them to try to get at that very specific texture — and then I’d do a side-by-side taste test with my best recipe and the box.
I fully expected the box to win. Like I said: Food memories are powerful. They’re also, in this case, totally unreliable.
The boxed bars were flatter than I’d remembered, and I had no recollection at all that there was a middle layer of sugary peanut butter, spread across the already-baked bars before the icing. But I followed the directions as the box laid out, reconstituting the powdered peanut butter with milk and slathering it dutifully on the mostly-cooled bars. When things were sufficiently room-temperature to proceed with the icing (another reconstituted powder, of course), I cut myself a square.
You probably know where I’m going with this: I was underwhelmed.
The bars were the kind of sweet that that sticks in the back of your mouth and goes rancid there. I fought the urge to immediately run upstairs and brush my teeth and took another bite. The flavor, I realized, wasn’t necessarily bad — once I got over the saccharine assault at the start of every mouthful. And the icing tasted exactly how I remembered: rich, chocolatey, with a certain bite I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
A few minutes later, my thoughts sorted and teeth brushed, I got to work on a second batch, this one from scratch. I cut down on the amount of flour I’d seen in most other recipes by a hair, leaned brown sugar over granulated and slightly upped the salt — and the bars I pulled out of the oven were puffier than their boxed cousins, nearly the same browned-at-the-edges color and only a bit less chewy. From there, I decided to forego the peanut butter layer and go straight to the icinig, which was an exercise in indiscriminately throwing butter and cocoa powder around my kitchen.
My basic plan was to cream some butter and cocoa, add vanilla extract, go wild with powdered sugar and then taste-test until I reached the right balance of sweet. I got there pretty easily, but the texture was off, so I added a bit of milk, which was also crucial to the boxed icing concoction. Once that was settled, I added a teaspoon of salt and got a hint of the bite I loved from the boxed version… so I just kept on adding. I ended up around a tablespoon, but be my guest if you’d like to add more. And if that quantity of salt scares you, which it shouldn’t, know this: You’ll definitely have more icing than you need for one pan of bars. Spread your leftovers on vanilla wafers and thank me later.
’90s peanut butter treats, updated and improved
BARS:
3/4 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp. creamy peanut butter
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 tbsp. vanilla
1 3/4 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. kosher salt
ICING:
1 stick + 2 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp. milk
1 tbsp. kosher salt
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and line a 9x13 pan with parchment paper — or butter it; you’ll be in just fine shape either way. Cream the butter, peanut butter and sugars on high speed until they’re smooth and almost fluffy, about a minute. Add in the eggs and vanilla gradually, and once they’re incorporated, add the rest of the dry ingredients. Bake the bars for 20-22 minutes, until they’re visibly browned at the edges. Let them cool for an hour.
To make the icing, begin by creaming the butter on a gradually increasing speed for 30 seconds to a minute, until it’s smooth. Add the cocoa powder and mix on low speed to combine; next, add milk, salt and vanilla. Once everything is evenly combined, begin adding powdered sugar, half a cup at a time. After you’ve added 2 cups, be the judge: Do you like the consistency and sweetness of the icing? Then stop. If you want it sweeter and a bit less dense, add another half cup.
Once the bars are cool, ice ’em and eat ’em.