It’s Day 2 of Peanut Week, who’s excited??  Hopefully these Honey Roasted Peanut Marshmallow Bars will make you even more excited!

Salted nut rolls have always been a favorite candy of mine.  After all, isn’t a salted nut roll the original sweet and salty snack??  Since my husband was diagnosed with Type I diabetes, we have gone through more honey roasted peanuts in my house than I have had in my entire lifetime!  I buy giant jars of them at Costco and he will have a small dish of them for dessert or as a pre-dinner snack.  Even the honey roasted peanuts are a great low-carb snack option.  Since I began bringing massive loads of these perfectly addicting sweet and salty peanuts into my home, I have been dying to find a recipe to use them in.  Enter Honey Roasted Peanut Marshmallow Bars!

The flavors of these bars will remind you of eating a salted nut roll but you don’t even have to mess with a candy thermometer or making a nougat for this recipe.  Marshmallows lend that same gooey sweetness to these bars.  Also, these Honey Roasted Marshmallow Bars satisfy my texture craving for a perfect crunchy yet chewy snack.

These bars are quire sweet and rich so I recommend cutting the 8-inch square pan that you make them in into 20 pieces.  It would also be super cute presentation to wrap these Honey Roasted Peanut Marshmallow Bars individually in wax paper like you might find at a candy store.

A few tips for this recipe:

• Spray your parchment paper very liberally with nonstick cooking spray.  Melted marshmallows may be one of the stickiest substances on the planet!
• Spray the measuring cups that you use to measure the peanut butter and corn syrup with nonstick cooking spray to make cleanup easier.
• You could certainly use plain roasted peanuts or any other nut that you enjoy in this recipe.

DID YOU KNOW?  Peanuts and peanut butter can help control blood sugar.  If you peanuts or peanut butter as part of a high carbohydrate meal, the healthy oils and proteins in peanuts can decrease blood sugar spikes and help to keep blood sugars stable throughout the entire day.

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Last weekend I was fortunate to travel to Napa, California courtesy of The Peanut Institute.  The Peanut Institute “is a non-profit organization that supports nutrition research and develops educational programs to encourage healthful lifestyles that include peanuts and peanut products.”  The trip was incredible and I learned wonderful facts about the nutritional benefits of peanuts, got to spend time with one of my great friends Emily,

and we even got to cook at the Culinary Institute of America!  Check that one off my bucket list!

The trip inspired me in so many ways.  When I returned home, I was excited to share some fantastic peanutty recipes with you.  So sweet teeth, I am declaring it Peanut Week!  I will be sharing one fact that I learned about peanuts with each of these satisfying recipes.

What better way to kick of Peanut Week than with these Flourless Peanut Butter Snickers Cookies?

These Flourless Peanut Butter Snickers Cookies are so light and soft, you would never guess that a key ingredient like flour is missing!  With only six ingredients, these cookies are a great gluten-free treat option and you will be shocked how only SIX ingredients can create a cookie that tastes so delicious.

I was so happy when I calculated the nutrition facts for these Flourless Peanut Butter Snickers Cookies and found out that each cookie only has 13 grams of carbs!  That is pretty remarkable for a cookie that has chopped up candy bars in it!

DID YOU KNOW??  Eating 1 ounce of peanuts daily can cut your risk of heart disease in half.  The oil in peanuts is mostly monounsaturated which offers the same health benefits as other healthy fats such as olive oil.

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Sometimes I have no filter.  For example, in my mind, if chocolate cake is good, then chocolate cake with nuts inside, chocolate frosting on top and crushed up Heath Bars sprinkled over the top could only be better.  Peanut butter cookies are one of my all time favorite cookies.  I particularly like a thick (I’m talking at least an inch) cookie that is crispy on the outer edges and chewy in the middle with coarse sugar sprinkled over the top.  I think that it can be so difficult to replicate the style of a good bakery cookie at home.  When I decided to make a perfectly good thing even better by making these Oreo-Stuffed Peanut Butter Cookies, I knew that I wanted the peanut butter cookie to be able to stand on it’s own.  I wanted that thick and chewy bakery-style peanut butter cookie.

The base cookie that I used for these Oreo-Stuffed Peanut Butter Cookies are soft and chewy ad would be fantastic on their own.  But after making Oreo-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies a few months ago, I have been dying to try another cookie-inside-cookie combination!

I see many other stuffed cookie adventures in my future because I just cannot get enough of these over-the-top treats.  When you bake an Oreo inside a cookie, the Oreo itself gets slightly softer, but not at all soggy.  And the glorious, mysterious creamy filling in the Oreo melts slightly so that it is somewhat molten if you eat one of the stuffed cookies while they are still warm out of the oven.  With all of the creative Oreo flavors on the market these days, stay tuned for the next flavor combination that I present to you, because I know that it will not end with these Oreo-Stuffed Peanut Butter Cookies.

If you need even more Oreo-inspired treats in your life, let me remind you of these Cookies & Cream Brownies.

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Remember when you were little and you would spin a globe around and put your finger on it and exclaim that wherever it landed is where you were going to live when you grew up? Well I have decided to incorporate that mentality into my “what to bake next” routine.  You see, everyday, I Pin recipes, I save recipes to my inbox recipe folder, I tear out recipes from magazines and I mark pages in cookbooks that have recipes that I must make.  However, I have all of these real and virtual piles of recipes, but rarely do I actually make any of them!  And it’s so silly because these recipes are where I find a lot of my inspiration for things I actually am baking in my kitchen each week, so why oh why have I not actually made more of these recipes that have inspired me in the first place?  We are changing that today with these Chocolate Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Truffles.

In this spirit of the “spin the globe” game, I am going to select a recipe from either my Pinterest boards or my inbox from other bloggers who have inspired me and put my own twist on the recipe and share it with you each month.  I may do this once or twice a month and I hope that it will inspire you the way that these recipes inspire me to try new things and to create adorable and scrumptious treats to share.

Last weekend I shared this Pretzel Toffee Fudge with you and suggested that it would be a great addition to a homemade chocolate box to give on Valentine’s Day.

Well, we all like a little variety and so why not add these Chocolate Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Truffles to that thoughtful gift of yours?

This recipe was adapted from Bakerella who is notorious as the cake pop lady but she also whips up some other sweets and treats that are worthy of recreating.

These Chocolate Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Truffles could not be easier to make and again, will fool your sweetie into thinking that you have slaved all day in the kitchen to make him/her something special.  I rolled my truffles in crushed salted peanuts, but you could roll them in cocoa powder or toss them in some sprinkles as well.

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It never fails that around 1-2 pm, I hit a wall and fall into an afternoon slump.  I blame feeling full from lunch and especially if I am in a warm room, my eyes just get heavy and I become more lethargic.  I often use an afternoon snack or beverage as a pick-me-up to combat the feeling of wanting to do nothing but nap.

These Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Power Bars have many good-for-you ingredients and will give you an energy boost if you feel the grogginess that I described in the early afternoon.  Peanuts and peanut butter provide protein to keep you feeling full and satiated for hours.  A good dose of whole grains like whole wheat flour, rolled oats and wheat germ help to get in your servings of healthy carbs for the day.  And to give you something to look forward to, these bars are packed with chocolate chips and even drizzled with some melty chocolate for a little antioxidant boost.

So give yourself an afternoon snack to look forward to that will help to keep you focused throughout the day and make a batch of these Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Power Bars.

mix together peanut butter and brown sugar

add eggs, oil and vanilla and mix

mix in flour, baking soda and cinnamon

mix in oats and wheat germ

mix in peanuts and chocolate chips

spread into pan and bake

cool, drizzle with chocolate, cut and serve

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