Recipe: Chocolate Peanut Butter Bark

I have come up with the perfect treat if you're eating low-carb. It tastes just like chocolate covered peanuts but in the form of something like toffee bark, in that it is poured into a pan.

I'm calling it:

Chocolate Peanut Butter Bark

1 stick + 2 T. of butter (total of 10 T.)
6 T. cocoa

4 T. peanut butter
1 1/2 c. splenda
1/2 c. erythritol (buy it here)
2 packets stevia
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
heavy cream as needed (appx. 3-4 T.)

2-3 c. peanuts (depending on how much cream you add)

Melt the butter on low heat in a sauce pan. Add cocoa and stir until smooth. Add the the peanut butter and stir again until smooth. Turn the heat off.

Add sweeteners and vanilla, and again, stir, but it won't be smooth. At this point, you'll want to add enough cream to make it smooth again. You may need to turn the heat back on at this point. If the mixture winds up a little thin, it's okay because it will harden in the fridge.

Don't stop stirring while the heat is on

Add peanuts and stir until they are thoroughly covered. For the last batch I made I tried peanuts from a local place that still had the skin on them, and they came out just fine.

Pour the mixture into a quarter sheet pan that is covered with parchment paper. Spread the mixture over the pan.

Parchment paper is the best thing since sliced meat :P

Refrigerate for a few hours until hardened. Once hardened you can break into chunks and put them in a container and freeze them. It's very good frozen! Actually it's just damned good :)

The final product, great for everyday snacks or a party

The entire recipe has the following nutritional content (according to the Nutrition Data website):

5645 calories (all that butter yum!)
505 g fat
139 g saturated fat
213 g carbs
64 g fiber
184 g protein

That's 149 grams of net carbs in the entire recipe. You can eat maybe three pieces before you've really had quite enough. There's probably about 5 grams of carbs per chunk, depending on the size of the chunk. And a whole lot of yummy fat to mediate those carbs.

Lindt changes ingredients in it's chocolate

It pisses me off that Lindt has changed their 85% dark chocolate. They have doubled the carb count and the sugar. I had been buying it because four squares only had eight grams of carbs and three grams of sugar. Now it has fifteen grams of carbs and five grams of sugar. I suppose it's not a whole lot of difference, especially if you only eat one square here and there as I do, but I don't understand WHY they had to change it. It was good the way it was. I like bitter chocolate.

A lot of people are mad that they changed their 70% chocolate to have soy lecithin in it. I suppose they've done this to make it more like American chocolate. To which I think, why would people buy European chocolate to have it be more like American chocolate? If you want American chocolate, there's already Hershey's.

I probably won't be buying any more of it. I'll find something else. Probably something made in Europe and not here.