Happy National Peanut Butter Day!
In honor of National Peanut Butter Day I modified one of my favorite dessert bar recipes from Elana Amsterdam’s Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook. The Raspberry Bar recipe is simply scrumptious as is but today I thought I’d add a little oomph to it…and nothing goes better with jelly (for me, anyways!) than peanut butter! The original recipe of course calls for Raspberry fruit spread but my favorite is Black Currant so that’s what I used, you can substitute your favorite flavor and any nut butter would work in place of the peanut butter. I replaced the egg in the recipe with a flax egg to make this a vegan-friendly treat as well. These are great for an on-the-go snack too…I cut them up, wrap them in plastic wrap and freeze them, EASY!
PB&J Bars
Crust:
3 cups almond flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
Blend the almond flour, salt, coconut oil and vanilla in a food processor or high-speed blender until a smooth dough forms. Press the dough into a greased 9×13 baking dish. Bake at 350 for 12-15 minutes, until lightly golden. Prepare the topping and measure out the filling while the crust is baking.
Filling:
1/2 cup peanut butter, room temperature or slightly warmed
1 cup fruit spread
Spread the peanut butter in a thin layer over the hot crust. Top the peanut butter layer with your favorite fruit spread flavor, spreading evenly.
Topping:
1 3/4 cups almond flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
2 Tbsp. coconut nectar
1 flax egg (1 Tbsp. flax meal mixed with 2 Tbsp. warm water…allow to thicken)
1 cup sliced almonds
Combine the almond flour, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl. Stir in the coconut oil, coconut nectar and flax egg. Gently fold in the almond slices. Distribute the topping evenly over the fruit spread layer, pressing it down slightly with the back of a spoon. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes or until the topping its lightly golden brown. Let cool on a wire rack for 1 hour and then refrigerate. Cut into bars and serve. Makes 18-24 servings.
This recipe is shared at:
Fight Back Fridays, Gluten-Free Fridays, Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays, Fat Tuesday, Tasty Tuesday, Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, Gluten-Free Wednesdays, Allergy-Free Wednesdays ,Wheat Free Wednesdays
Simply Living Healthy 
Oh yum! This looks delicious!
Yum! Can’t wait to make these!
Ahhh this is what I will eat when I am craving PB&J on white bread with the crusts cut off (i.e. my childhood). Thank you!!
Yep! It does the trick…that’s one of the things I miss the most!
Hi – This recipe looks wonderful but I can’t eat flax – allergic… will an egg do in place of the flax egg? Thanks
Oh yes, the original recipe calls for an egg.
This looks and sounds sooooo good. I bet it smells delicious as it’s baking. My kids are PB&J addicts – I can’t wait to make it for them.
Thanks for posting this!
Jen
Wow, these sound awesome! We have a nut allergy so I couldn’t use almond flour, do you think all purpose GF flour might work? I have used our sunbutter in dishes like this so that should be okay! WOW, amazing!!
Thanks for linking up at our Gluten Free Fridays party! I have tweeted and pinned your entry to our Gluten Free Fridays board on Pinterest! 🙂
Thanks for linking back to the Gluten Free Fridays post!
See you at the link up this week! We are having a special giveaway this week! Its a tote bag filled with some Gluten Free Allergy Friendly goodies!
Cindy from vegetarianmamma.com
I picked your recipe as one of my favorites from last week’s Gluten Free Fridays link up! We have “featured on” badges available here: http://vegetarianmamma.com/gluten-free-fridays/ You are welcome to them, if you’d like. If not, no worries….just wanted to let you know I thought your entry was awesome! 🙂 See you this week!
Cindy
I’m looking for grain free recipes these days, and this looks delicious! Thanks so much for sharing it on Gluten-Free Wednesdays. I just Pinned it.
These sound fantastic! Nothing like a good PBJ combo.
I made these last night with almond butter instead of peanut butter. Delicious! I also used an egg because I didn’t have any flax.
I love them! I was afraid I had overbaked them, but it turns out I underbaked. Next time I will bake them for the full time in the instructions instead of reducing it like I did this time.
I did find that the almond butter was a little difficult to spread – the crust kept being pulled up with it. I’m not sure if that was because the crust was slightly underbaked or maybe even because it was almond butter instead of peanut.
Still, they are really good!
I’m so glad you enjoyed them! The crust is pretty soft even fully baked, the PB pulled a bit at mine too…you could try softening the almond butter on the stove or microwave next time, that may help.