I’m going to be perfectly honest with you- I decided to make this recipe out of complete and total jealousy. See- my kids often buy their lunch at school. They go to a great school in a fabulous district and the school lunch program is pretty fantastic. They even just started a program where they are buying local seasonal produce and featuring them each month on the menu. Super cool stuff. But now let’s get to the story surrounding these Better than the Lunch Lady’s Peanut Butter Bars…

So my kiddos have an online Pay For It account to pay for their lunch when they decide to buy at school instead of packing. One day, I noticed that my son’s account was having to be automatically renewed more often than I would have thought necessary. So Todd and I put on our detective hats and got to looking. We found the answer right away. Dessert, dessert, dessert. Like every other day there was a dessert (which, by the way, was totally against the rules that we had set). He was allowed to purchase an occasional dessert, maybe once a week, but he was always supposed to ask us when we talked about lunch the evening prior.

After school, we sat the kids down and went over the “buying your lunch rules” again. Then my daughter, God love her, proceeds to totally rat out my son. She says, “oh yeah, Ethan buys the peanut butter bars like everyday.” And I can just tell by the grin on his face that she has busted him. “But mom, there’re sooooooo good!” he says. Ugh. Total disgust. My son, whom doesn’t like cake, will very rarely eat ice cream or brownies, likes maybe only 2 or 3 kinds of cookies is telling ME- his mother, whom bakes everything from scratch and considers herself quite an awesome baker- that the Lunch Lady’s peanut butter bars are the ”soooooo good”?! Slap to the face!

Then… and then…. to top it all off…

I made a batch of peanut butter bars. Everyone tries them. My daughter says, “Mom, these are better than the bars at school.” My husband says, “Damn, it’s impressive when you hit it out of the park on the first try!” And my son, Ethan, he eats maybe 2 bites and says he’ll save the rest for later. WTF?! And let me just tell you, folks, he never came back for that piece that he saved! He said my peanut butter was too crunchy. Ugh… at this point, I’m imagining myself doing recon at the school to see what these peanut butter bars are like… so I keep trying.

Finally, I got to here… Better than the Lunch Lady’s Peanut Butter Bars! My son took a big bite, smiled, and said, “Wow, this is good!” While all of this may seem silly, some days I look at my son and see how tall he’s gotten and how old he is looking and I think to myself- I don’t have that much time left with him as a kid. It really does go by quickly. And if I know that there’s something that makes him happy and it’s something as easy as Peanut Butter Bars, you can bet your butt that I’m going to set out to make the best damn peanut butter bars ever created!

Note: my husband and daughter enjoyed the more “crunchy” bars better than these bars. To get more of a crunch to your bar, simply double the amount of vanilla wafer crumbs.

Enjoy!!

Here are some of the recommended products that I used to create this delicious recipe. These are not only products that I use, but products that I love.

Have you tried this recipe? Thinking about it? I’d love to hear from you! Please leave me your thoughts below in the comment section.

Name: Better than the Lunch Lady’s Peanut Butter Bars
Total time: 10 min
Yield: 24 Servings
Ingredients: 2 Cups Creamy Peanut Butter; 3 1/2 Cups Confectioner's Sugar; 1 Tbsp Pure Vanilla; 1/2 Cup Unsalted Butter, melted and cooled slightly; 1 Cup Vanilla Wafers, pulsed into finely ground crumbs (I filled a measuring cup with about 2 cups of wafers- which produced 1 cup finely ground); 18 Oz Semi-sweet Chocolate Chips; 1/4 Cup Coconut Oil; Pinch of Salt

If you love the union between peanut butter and chocolate as much as I do, check out THE Buckeye recipe as well 👇🏻

Better than the Lunch Lady’s Peanut Butter Bars

These peanut butter bars are the easiest and most delicious dessert that will take you back to your childhood.

Prep Time

10 Minutes

Passive Time

4+ Hours

Servings

Ingredients

2 Cups Creamy Peanut Butter
3 1/2 Cups Confectioner's Sugar
1 Tbsp Pure Vanilla
1/2 Cup Unsalted Butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 Cup Vanilla Wafers, pulsed into finely ground crumbs I filled a measuring cup with about 2 cups of wafers- which produced 1 cup finely ground
18 Oz Semi-sweet Chocolate Chips
1/4 Cup Coconut Oil
Pinch of Salt