Chocolate Bacon Peanut Butter Bars

Once we had gotten settled into the house and got a feel for the work load of school, Benjamin decided that he wanted to host a poker night once a month as a way for the guys in the program to do something social outside of the school setting.  This gives me the perfect opportunity to try new recipes!

For the first one, I made Angel Sugar Cookies.  They are amazingly light and super delish!  Put them on your list of things to try.  Right now... do it.  It makes a bunch and the cookies are so addicting.  But it's okay to eat, like 7 in one sitting because they are so airy!

For last month's poker night, I came across a very manly sounding dessert.  Manly because it has bacon in it.  Chocolate Bacon Peanut Butter Bars.  Now, for those of you who scoff and turn your nose up at the sounds of bacon and chocolate together, you just HAVE to try it!  Years ago a company called Vogues came into my life with their wonderful collection of bacon chocolates.  And because my hubby loves peanut butter, a little chocolate and bacon this recipe was perfect to try out!

Let's start with the ingredients:

1 pouch of peanut butter cookie mix
1/3 cup of vegetable oil
2T of maple syrup
1 egg
10 slices of bacon (crumbled)
1/2 cup of peanuts
1 cup of semi sweet chocolate chips

Directions
Heat your oven to 350 degrees.  Spray a 9x9 pan with cooking spray.
Stir the cookie mix, oil, syrup, and egg to create the dough.
Cook your bacon and break into small crumbs.  Oscar Mayer's Fully Cooked Bacon that you microwave for only seconds is my favorite way to "cook" bacon when I need it quickly.  AND it gets super duper crispy.  I love crispy bacon.  If you've ever been to IHOP or Denny's with me, I always ask for my bacon to be crispy.  No wiggly bacon here, please.  Plus for this recipe, you need your bacon to be crisp.
Save a handful of your bacon bits to be used for the top of the bars.  The remaining bits of bacon, stir into the dough.
If you are a peanut lover, here is where you would add the peanuts also.
Spread the mixture into your 9x9 pan.

Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Now this next part you can do one of two ways.  You can either melt the chocolate chips in the microwave and then spread the chocolatey goodness on top or you can wait a few minutes for cake part to cool and then scatter the chips like so:

Put the pan back into the oven for about 1 minute and then spread the melty chips.  Once there is a nice layer of chocolate, sprinkle on the extra bacon crumbles!
Cut into squares and serve!

The guys that ate this dessert said it was yummy and the piece that I ate had the same effect on me!

I'm starting to look for the next fun recipe for the next poker night....