Irresistible Homemade Nutter Butter Bars: Your Ultimate Chewy Peanut Butter & Chocolate Dream
Prepare to embark on a delicious journey with these incredible homemade Nutter Butter Bars! Imagine sinking your teeth into a perfectly soft and chewy peanut butter bar, generously studded with melty chocolate chips, and elevated with the unmistakable crunch and creamy filling of classic Nutter Butter cookies. This recipe isn’t just a dessert; it’s a nostalgic trip to childhood, offering a double dose of peanut butter goodness that’s simply irresistible.
This Nutter Butter Bars recipe truly stands out for its simplicity and incredibly satisfying results. You’ll find it incredibly fun to make and even more delightful to eat! These bars are essentially a hearty peanut butter cookie baked into a convenient bar form, but with a special twist: they’re generously topped with whole Nutter Butter cookies and an abundance of semi-sweet chocolate chips, creating a textural and flavor masterpiece.
One of the best parts about this recipe is its accessibility. Forget about complex baking equipment; no stand mixer or fancy tools are required. Everything comes together easily in just one bowl, making cleanup a breeze. Plus, from start to finish, these delectable bars are ready to be enjoyed in less than an hour, making them perfect for last-minute cravings or spontaneous gatherings.
Prepare for a truly rich and indulgent experience. These bars deliver pure peanut butter heaven, with a perfectly soft and chewy texture that melts in your mouth. They are the ultimate nostalgic treat, sure to delight any Nutter Butter lover and bring a smile to everyone’s face!
If you’re a true peanut butter aficionado looking for more delightful treats, be sure to explore other recipes like our Chocolate Peanut Butter Marbled Cookies, the unique Peanut Butter Miso Cookies, or the crowd-pleasing Monster Cookie Bars. Each offers a distinct take on the beloved peanut butter flavor.
Table of Contents
Why These Nutter Butter Bars Are The Best
There are countless reasons why this Nutter Butter bar recipe has become a fan favorite. From its straightforward preparation to its incredible flavor profile, every aspect is designed for a delightful baking and eating experience.
- Effortlessly Easy Recipe: Baking should be fun, not frustrating! This recipe embodies simplicity, coming together in a single bowl in less than an hour. It’s perfect for beginner bakers or anyone looking for a quick, impressive dessert without the fuss of complicated steps or extensive cleanup. The straightforward process ensures consistent, delicious results every time.
- Unforgettable Peanut Butter Flavor: These bars are a true celebration of all things peanut butter. We’re talking a rich, deep peanut butter flavor infused throughout the chewy cookie base, further enhanced by the iconic peanut butter sandwich cookies baked right on top. This double dose of peanut butter ensures a taste that will satisfy even the most ardent peanut butter enthusiasts, beautifully complemented by the sweet chocolate chips.
- Perfectly Soft and Chewy Texture: Forget dry, crumbly bars! Our Nutter Butter bars are designed to be wonderfully soft and incredibly chewy, much like your favorite cookie, but in a convenient bar form. The precise balance of ingredients and baking time results in a moist interior with slightly crisp, golden edges, offering a delightful textural contrast that makes each bite pure bliss. They truly embody the ideal cookie bar consistency.
Essential Ingredient Notes for Success
Achieving the perfect batch of Nutter Butter Bars starts with understanding your ingredients. Here’s a breakdown of what you’ll need and some important considerations to ensure the best possible outcome. Find the full ingredient measurements and detailed instructions in the recipe card below!
- Peanut Butter: For this recipe, we highly recommend using unsalted creamy peanut butter. The creamy texture contributes to the smooth, chewy consistency of the bars. Using unsalted peanut butter allows you to control the overall saltiness of the final product. Salted peanut butter can make these bars overwhelmingly salty, so it’s best to stick to unsalted. Avoid natural peanut butter with oil separation as it can affect the bar’s texture and consistency.
- Nutter Butter Cookies: These iconic peanut-shaped cookies are the star of the show! You’ll typically find them in the cookie and snack aisle of any major grocery store. They add a delightful crunch, an extra layer of peanut butter flavor, and a fun, recognizable element to the top of your bars. If Nutter Butter cookies are unavailable, consider other peanut butter sandwich cookies, though the flavor and shape will differ slightly.
- Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips: The classic pairing for peanut butter! Semi-sweet chocolate chips provide a balanced sweetness that complements the rich peanut butter without being overly cloying. You can easily substitute them with dark chocolate chips for a more intense chocolate flavor or milk chocolate chips for a sweeter, creamier touch. Feel free to use mini chips for more even distribution or chopped chocolate for larger, molten pockets of flavor.
- Butter: Unsalted butter is preferred in most baking recipes, including this one, as it gives you precise control over the salt content. If you only have salted butter on hand, remember to reduce the added salt in the recipe from 1/2 teaspoon to 1/4 teaspoon to prevent your bars from becoming too salty. Melting the butter and then cooling it slightly is crucial for developing that desirable chewy texture in the bars.
- Sugars (Granulated & Light Brown): The combination of granulated sugar and light brown sugar is key to both the flavor and texture of these bars. Granulated sugar provides sweetness and helps with browning, while light brown sugar adds moisture, depth of flavor (with its molasses content), and contributes significantly to the soft, chewy consistency that we’re aiming for.
- Egg: A large, room temperature egg acts as a binder, providing structure, moisture, and richness to the cookie dough. Using a room temperature egg helps it emulsify better with the other ingredients, leading to a smoother, more uniform batter.
- Vanilla Extract: This essential baking ingredient enhances all the other flavors, particularly the chocolate and peanut butter, adding a warm, aromatic depth that completes the profile of these delicious bars. Don’t skip it!
- All-Purpose Flour: Standard all-purpose flour provides the primary structure for our cookie bars. For accurate measurements, always “spoon and level” your flour: spoon flour into your measuring cup and then level it off with a straight edge, rather than scooping directly from the bag. This prevents over-measuring and dense bars.
- Baking Powder: Our leavening agent! Baking powder helps the bars achieve a slight lift and a tender, soft crumb. Ensure your baking powder is fresh for optimal results; if it’s expired, your bars may not rise properly.
- Salt: A small amount of salt is vital for balancing the sweetness and intensifying the rich flavors of the peanut butter and chocolate. It prevents the bars from tasting flat or overly sweet.
Simple Step-by-Step Recipe Instructions
Ready to whip up a batch of these heavenly Nutter Butter Bars? This incredibly easy recipe requires minimal equipment – just one large bowl, a whisk, and a square 8×8 baking pan. That’s right, no stand mixer needed! Before you dive in, make sure to properly line your baking pan with parchment paper for easy removal and preheat your oven to 350 F (180 C) to ensure even baking from the start.
STEP ONE: Prepare your baking pan and oven. Begin by lining your 8×8 inch baking pan with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on two sides to create “handles.” This makes lifting the cooled bars out of the pan incredibly easy. Preheat your oven to 350°F (180°C) and allow it to come to temperature fully before you start baking.
STEP TWO: Cream the butter and sugars. In a spacious mixing bowl, combine the slightly cooled melted butter with both the granulated sugar and light brown sugar. Whisk these ingredients together vigorously until they are well combined and the mixture appears smooth and creamy. Ensure the butter isn’t too hot, or it could scramble the egg in the next step.
STEP THREE: Mix in the wet ingredients. To the butter and sugar mixture, add the large egg and vanilla extract. Whisk thoroughly until all ingredients are fully incorporated and the mixture is uniform and smooth. This step is crucial for developing the chewy texture of the bars.
STEP FOUR: Incorporate the peanut butter. Now, add the creamy peanut butter to the mixing bowl. Whisk it into the wet ingredients until it’s completely smooth and fully integrated into the dough, creating a rich, uniform peanut butter base.
STEP FIVE: Fold in the dry ingredients and chocolate. Gently fold in the all-purpose flour, baking powder, salt, and semi-sweet chocolate chips. Mix until just combined – it’s crucial not to over-mix the dough, as this can lead to tough bars. Stop mixing as soon as you no longer see streaks of dry flour.
STEP SIX: Bake the bars to perfection. Evenly spread the peanut butter cookie dough into your prepared baking pan, pressing it down lightly into an even layer. Arrange the Nutter Butter cookies on top of the dough, gently pressing them down to secure them. Bake for 25-27 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown and the center looks set and slightly wrinkled. The bars may still seem slightly soft in the middle, but they will firm up as they cool. Once baked, transfer the pan to a wire cooling rack and allow the bars to cool completely before attempting to cut them. Patience is key here! Once fully cooled, use a sharp knife to cut them into 16 perfectly sized bars, then enjoy every delightful bite!
Expert Baking Tips for Flawless Bars
Even simple recipes benefit from a few expert insights. Follow these tips to ensure your Nutter Butter bars turn out absolutely perfect every single time.
- Utilize a Kitchen Scale: For the most accurate and consistent measurements, especially for flour, a kitchen scale is your best friend. Volumetric measurements (cups) can vary greatly, leading to dry or crumbly bars. Measuring by weight (grams) ensures you’re adding the precise amount of each ingredient, which is a game-changer for baking success.
- Monitor Baking Times Closely: Remember that all ovens can vary significantly in temperature and performance. Your bars might bake quicker or take slightly longer than the indicated time. Keep a close eye on them, looking for key signs of doneness: golden brown and slightly wrinkled edges, and a center that appears set but still slightly soft. An underbaked bar will be too gooey, while an overbaked one will be dry.
- Ensure Room Temperature Ingredients: Using room temperature egg and butter is crucial. This allows all the ingredients to emulsify together smoothly, creating a uniform batter. A smooth batter bakes more evenly, resulting in a perfectly textured bar without any dense or crumbly spots. If your egg is cold, place it in a bowl of warm water for 5-10 minutes to bring it to room temperature quickly.
- Cool the Melted Butter Properly: After melting your butter, allow it to cool down until it’s just warm to the touch, but not hot. Adding hot butter directly to sugars and eggs can cause the sugar to melt too quickly and the egg to cook, altering the final texture of your bars. A few minutes of cooling makes all the difference.
- Resist the Urge to Cut Early: This is perhaps the hardest tip to follow, but it’s essential! The bars are much easier to cut into neat squares and will hold their shape perfectly when they are completely cool. If you cut them while still warm, they will likely be too gooey and crumbly, falling apart and making a messy experience. Patience truly pays off here.
- Avoid Overmixing the Dough: Once you add the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt), mix only until just combined. Overmixing develops the gluten in the flour, leading to tough, dense bars instead of the desirable soft and chewy texture. As soon as you no longer see streaks of dry flour, stop mixing.
- Always Use Parchment Paper: Lining your baking pan with parchment paper is non-negotiable for easy removal and cleanup. It prevents sticking and allows you to lift the entire slab of bars out of the pan, making cutting a breeze.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Absolutely! While chocolate and peanut butter are a match made in heaven, you can certainly omit the chocolate chips if you prefer a pure peanut butter experience. Alternatively, feel free to substitute them with a different kind of chocolate, such as dark chocolate for a richer flavor, milk chocolate for extra sweetness, or even white chocolate chips for a unique twist. Butterscotch chips or chopped Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups would also be fantastic additions!
If Nutter Butter cookies are not available in your area, the most similar substitute would be another brand of peanut butter sandwich cookies. Look for any cookie that features two peanut butter-flavored wafers with a creamy peanut butter filling. While the specific flavor and texture might vary slightly, they will provide a similar aesthetic and boost of peanut butter goodness. Butterfinger cookies or other peanut-flavored crunchy cookies could also work for a different, yet still delicious, result.
Patience is truly a virtue when it comes to cutting these bars! You should always wait until the bars are completely cool and have set before attempting to slice into them. If you cut them while they are still warm, the gooey, delicious texture will likely cause them to crumble and fall apart, making for messy, uneven pieces. Cooling them completely, preferably on a wire rack for at least an hour (or even longer), allows them to firm up and results in perfectly clean, neat cuts.
While this recipe was developed using creamy peanut butter for a consistently smooth and chewy bar, you can certainly experiment with crunchy peanut butter. Using crunchy peanut butter will add an extra textural element with small bits of peanuts throughout the bar, which some people absolutely love! The overall moisture and fat content should be similar enough, so it shouldn’t drastically alter the baking process. If you try it, we’d love to hear how they turn out!
It’s generally not recommended to use natural peanut butter (the kind that separates oil) for baking recipes like this. The oil separation and different consistency of natural peanut butter can lead to a greasier dough and a less predictable final texture in your bars. For best results and the intended chewy consistency, stick to commercial no-stir creamy peanut butter.
Absolutely! If you’re a fan of extra crunch, feel free to fold in about ½ cup of chopped roasted peanuts (or your favorite nuts like pecans or walnuts) along with the chocolate chips. This will enhance the nutty flavor and add another delightful textural layer to your Nutter Butter bars.
Storage & Freezing Guidelines
Proper storage is key to keeping your Nutter Butter Bars fresh and delicious for as long as possible. Whether you plan to enjoy them within a few days or save them for a future treat, here’s how to store them effectively:
- Room Temperature Storage: Once completely cooled, these bars are best stored in an airtight container or a heavy-duty ziplock bag at room temperature. This will keep them fresh, soft, and chewy for approximately 3-4 days. To maintain their texture, avoid storing them in direct sunlight or in a warm kitchen environment.
- Freezer Storage: Nutter Butter bars freeze beautifully, making them perfect for meal prep or enjoying a homemade treat whenever a craving strikes. To freeze, ensure the bars are completely cool. You can freeze them whole or cut into individual squares. Wrap each bar tightly in plastic wrap, then place them in an airtight freezer-safe container or a large freezer bag. They will keep well in the freezer for up to one month. When ready to enjoy, simply thaw them at room temperature for a few hours or warm them slightly in the microwave for a warm, gooey treat.
Related Peanut Butter Recipes to Try
If you’ve fallen in love with these Nutter Butter Bars and are eager for more peanut butter delights, be sure to check out our other recipes. From classic cookies to unique twists, there’s always something new to bake and enjoy!
If you tried this recipe or any other delicious creation on our website, please let us know how it went in the comments section below. We absolutely love hearing from you and seeing your baking triumphs! Also, don’t forget to leave a star rating while you’re there to help other bakers discover these fantastic treats. You can also tag us on Instagram or Facebook so we can admire your beautiful creations!
Nutter Butter Bars
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Equipment
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1 square 8×8 baking pan
Ingredients
- ½ cup unsalted butter, melted
- ½ cup light brown sugar, packed
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- ¼ cup + ⅛ cup unsalted creamy peanut butter
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 ⅓ cup + 1 tbsp all-purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- ½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 10 nutter butter cookies
Instructions
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Line a square 8×8 baking pan with parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 350 F/180 C.
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Melt the butter. Let it cool until still warm but not hot, about 5 minutes.½ cup (113 g) unsalted butter
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Whisk in the sugar and brown sugar.½ cup (100 g) light brown sugar, ¼ cup (50 g) granulated sugar
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Whisk in the peanut butter, egg, and vanilla.¼ cup + ⅛ cup (100 g) unsalted creamy peanut butter, 1 (55 g) large egg, 2 tsp vanilla extract
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Fold in the flour, baking powder, salt, and chocolate chips.1 ⅓ cup + 1 tbsp (168 g) all-purpose flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, ½ cup (90 g) semi-sweet chocolate chips
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Spread the dough evenly into pan.
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Press the nutter butter cookies into the top of the dough.10 nutter butter cookies
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Bake at 350 for 25-27 minutes or until the edges are golden brown and wrinkled.
Notes
ingredient notes
- Peanut butter: We recommend unsalted creamy peanut butter for a smooth texture and to control the saltiness. Natural peanut butter (with oil separation) is not ideal for this recipe’s consistency.
- Nutter butter cookies: These provide a signature crunch and extra peanut butter flavor. Find them in the cookie aisle.
- Semi-sweet chocolate chips: A balanced choice, but feel free to swap for dark or milk chocolate chips, or even butterscotch chips.
- Butter: Use unsalted butter for best results. If using salted, reduce the recipe’s added salt to 1/4 teaspoon. Ensure it’s melted and cooled, but not hot, before mixing.
recipe notes & tips
- Use a kitchen scale for the most accurate measurements, especially for flour, to ensure perfect results.
- All ovens are different, so baking times may vary. Keep an eye on your bars and look for golden brown, wrinkled edges and a set center.
- Ensure all cold ingredients, particularly the egg, are at room temperature. This helps create a smooth, emulsified batter that bakes evenly.
- Let the melted butter cool until it’s warm to the touch, not hot. Hot butter can affect the sugar and egg, leading to an undesirable texture.
- Always wait for the bars to cool completely before cutting them. This allows them to set fully, preventing them from falling apart and ensuring clean, beautiful slices.
- Avoid overmixing the dough once the flour is added. Overmixing can develop gluten, resulting in tough rather than chewy bars.
storage & freezing
- Room temperature: Store cooled bars in an airtight container or ziplock bag for 3-4 days to maintain optimal freshness and chewiness. Keep them away from direct heat or sunlight.
- Freezer: For longer storage, wrap individual bars tightly in plastic wrap, then place them in an airtight container or freezer bag. They can be frozen for up to one month. Thaw at room temperature or gently warm for a quick treat.
The calorie information provided for the recipe is an estimate. The accuracy of the calories listed is not guaranteed.
The calorie information provided for the recipe is an estimate. The accuracy of the calories listed is not guaranteed.