Peanut Butter HiFi Buddy Bars—Prototype 1:

Let's take a good look back at all these "Buddy" bars. Chocolate and peanut butter "shared" their "rule" with each other for the first few recipes. Then chocolate got to have a recipe all to itself. Later on, this popular flavor teamed up with cherry early in a year as Valentine's Day approached.

But peanut butter never got to have such a bar recipe all to itself...until now. Okay, white chocolate is used here, but this stuff is relatively neutral, at least compared to its darker, brown counterparts. In fact, many feel that this white ingredient should not even be called "chocolate". Possible alternative names have included "white candy". What can one officially call this thing? Maybe "neutral confection"? Still, for now, let's call this ingredient "white chocolate", whether it really is chocolate or not. Anyway, in light of this ingredient being so neutral that many flavorings added to it have easily dominated this white stuff, it should be reasonably safe to say that peanut butter is the sole flavor ruler (or at least easily the dominator) of this recipe described here.

So what do you do for such a nutty prototype here?

Looks like Prototype 8 of the Chocolate Peanut Butter Bran Buddy Bars is a good starting point. The changes are extremely simple and only need to be made in the crust: delete the semi-sweet chocolate, and increase the peanut butter by 4 ounces and the sugar by 1/4 cup. That all! The results:

Crust:
16 oz. whipped lowfat cottage cheese
6 oz. unsalted peanut butter
1 tbsp. skim milk
(blend the above three ingredients before adding the next three ones below)
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla (next to last ingredient here!)
8.8 oz. Bran Buds, ground up

Filling:
6 oz. melted, white chocolate
2 oz. unsalted peanut butter
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla (last ingredient here!)

Use a 9" x 9" pan, of course.

Peanut Butter HiFi Buddy Bars—Prototype 1

Delicious peanut butter flavor, although these bars seem to have a taste that may be too sweet for at least some people.
 
Peanut Butter HiFi Buddy Bars—Prototype 2:

If the above recipe was too sweet, perhaps this was the case only with the filling. However, the crust seemed like it could use a little more sweetness. So let's repeat Prototype 1, but shift all of the filling's sugar to the crust.

In light of a 13" x 9" pan being used for Prototype 2, the amounts shown below reflect this bigger batch:

Crust:
24 oz. whipped lowfat cottage cheese
9 oz. unsalted peanut butter
1 + 1/2 tbsp. skim milk
(blend the above three ingredients before adding the next three ones below)
1 + 1/2 cup plus 3 tbsp. sugar
1/2 tbsp. vanilla (next to last ingredient here!)
13.2 oz. Bran Buds, ground up

Filling:
9 oz. melted, white chocolate
3 oz. unsalted peanut butter
1/2 tbsp. vanilla (last ingredient here!)

Repeating what was just stated, a 13" x 9" (not 9" x 9"!) pan was used, and the ingredient amounts shown here reflect this.

Some tips are worth noting here. Vigorously stir the filling immediately after adding the vanilla, because this last ingredient causes the filling to get stiff. And (for all Bran/HiFi Buddy Bar recipes) stir, with even more intense vigor, the crust mixture immediately after adding the Bran Buds for the same type of reason. It is advisable to dump this entire amount of Bran Buds "powder" on top of the other crust ingredients, and then blend the contents as quickly as possible, before this dry, ground-up bran absorbs a lot of the moisture from the wet ingredients, thus rendering the crust very stiff.
 
I think that I improved the taste with this one. Happy Easter!
 

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