"Healthy" Buckeye Bark

Let me preface this post by saying that anything that mixes peanut butter and chocolate is not necessarily health, low in calories, or low in fat. However, steps have been taken to make this recipe a lot more healthy than the original.

I can not begin to tell you how happy it made me to see the post on Pinterest for Buckeye Bark. Buckeyes, or peanut butter balls, were one of my favorite holiday treats growing up. My mom and her friends used to get together every holiday season for a cookie exchange, and one person would always bring the Buckeyes. I am sure I polished off every single one my mom brought home.

The problem with traditional Buckeyes, is that they can be a bit time consuming - forming them into balls and then dipping them one by one into chocolate. That's why the bark is such a great idea. No ball rolling or dipping (...). Also, Buckeyes can be pretty unhealthy. Lets look at the list of ingredients: peanut butter, butter, sugar, oil, chocolate.

I decided I would experiment a little and try to make them at least a little bit more healthy. Here are the alterations I made to the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of creamy natural peanut butter
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter 1/4 -1/2 cup roughly chopped dried fruit (apricots, raisins, prunes, figs, dates...or a mix)
• 2 - 2 1/2 cups confectioners sugar 1-1 1/2 cup of Stevia
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 20 oz (2 reg. size bags) of semi-sweet dark chocolate chips
• 1 tbsp of shortening 2 tsp of coconut oil

Directions:

1. In a food processor, combine peanut butter, dried fruit, Stevia, and vanilla. Pulse until smooth.
2. Over a double boiler, or in the microwave, melt dark chocolate chips. Once melted, stir in the coconut oil. 
3. On a baking sheet (preferably lined with aluminum foil), spread 1/2 of the chocolate mixture evenly over the baking sheet. Put in the freezer for about 5 minutes to harden.
4. One hardened, press the peanut butter mixture over the chocolate covering the entire surface area. Put back in freezer to firm up for 2 minutes. 
5. After taking it back out of the freezer, pour the rest of the chocolate mixture over the peanut butter and spread evenly to cover the entire peanut butter layer. Once again, put in freezer for at least 15 minutes until completely hard. After that, you can break into pieces. If it still feels soft, put back in the freezer until hard enough to break. Store in the freezer to keep hard until ready to serve. 

Note: I made the bark with apricots, and while it is delicious, I definitely get a hint of the apricot flavor. I think it was just the apricots I used. But I wanted to warn you ahead of time if you try out this recipe.

Hope you enjoy!!