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This week we aren’t doing anything freaky, just making some nice, calm bar cookies.

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These are O’Henry Bars!

AuthorRetroRuth
Rating

From Art of Cooking from St. Pauls, 1965

Tested Recipe!

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  cup melted butter
 2 tsp vanilla
  cup peanut butter
 ½ cup white sugar
 4 cups quick-cooking oatmeal
 1 cup brown sugar
 1 cup chocolate chips

1

Mix melted butter and sugars, then add vanilla and oatmeal. Pat firmly into a well-greased 9x13 pan. Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

2

Melt chocolate chips and stir in peanut butter. Spread over the baked mixture as soon as it is removed from the oven. Let set in the refrigerator.

Ingredients

  cup melted butter
 2 tsp vanilla
  cup peanut butter
 ½ cup white sugar
 4 cups quick-cooking oatmeal
 1 cup brown sugar
 1 cup chocolate chips

Directions

1

Mix melted butter and sugars, then add vanilla and oatmeal. Pat firmly into a well-greased 9x13 pan. Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

2

Melt chocolate chips and stir in peanut butter. Spread over the baked mixture as soon as it is removed from the oven. Let set in the refrigerator.

O’Henry Bars

This recipe is from the Art of Cooking, a community cookbook from St. Paul’s Church from 1965. Sorry, this scan got kind of smeared, probably because a kid was tugging on my arm while I was scanning it.

Anyway, since O’Henry Bars are candy bars, I was interested to see if this would taste like candy, a cookie, or…a granola bar. Because 4 cups of oatmeal is a lot of oatmeal for a candy bar. Anyway, this also is missing the caramel and peanuts from the candy bar version, but there is peanut butter so I guess that counts. Sort of.

Interesting tidbit about candy Oh Henry Bars, Nestle writes on their website that it was named after a young man named Henry who used to flirt with the candy shop girls, which is kinda cute.

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These were incredibly easy to throw together, which is always much appreciated for a dessert.

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Done!

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And, covered with chocolate. We can’t forget that important step.

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A little note about these: They were very, very firm. It wasn’t difficult to get them out of the pan, but they were just very crunchy.

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“What’s that face for? It’s a cookie!”
”It’s not a cookie. It’s a granola bar.”

The Verdict: Granola Bar

These were very good, but obviously a chocolate-covered granola bar. They were very sweet and crunchy. Not so crunchy you broke your teeth, but they were on the firm side. The brown sugar gave them a slight caramel flavor. Not as fun as eating caramel, but it was good enough for me. You couldn’t really taste the peanut butter at all, so I probably would add more of that in the future. But overall, a yummy crunchy treat. Tom and Alex weren’t huge fans, so I ended up eating most of them. Were they like the candy version of O’Henry Bars? No, not at all. Were they good? Yes. Would I make them again? Yes. But next time I think I am doubling the chocolate topping.

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