Ina Garten-Inspired Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars

Compiled by Igor Kukolj, Editor. Nobody here has cooked this — how these are made.

Almost every food writer will tell you to buy natural peanut butter — just peanuts and salt. For baking, that advice is wrong.

Natural peanut butter separates, and heat accelerates it. In the oven the oil runs out of the dough, pools at the edges of the tin and leaves a base that is greasy in patches and dry and crumbling everywhere else. Commercial peanut butter contains a small amount of stabiliser — usually palm oil — which holds the emulsion together at temperature. The dough stays uniform and the bars hold as bars.

Keep the good jar for toast. This recipe wants the supermarket one.

Use a thick jam, not a runny one

Jam that is loose spreads into the base and boils up through the crumble, producing burnt sugar at the edges and a wet middle. A firm set jam or a conserve sits where you put it. If yours is loose, cook it down for a few minutes and cool it first.

Reserve dough for the top instead of making a separate crumble

Press two thirds into the tin, spread the jam, then dot the last third over in rough pieces. You want gaps — the jam should bubble up between them. A sealed top layer traps steam and the base goes soft underneath.

Cut them cold, with a clean knife

Warm jam smears across the cut face and every bar looks the same as the last one that went wrong. Fully cooled — two hours, or an hour in the fridge — and a knife wiped between cuts gives clean edges.

Storing

Five days in an airtight tin at room temperature. They freeze well cut, for three months, with paper between the layers. Do not refrigerate them long term; the base goes hard.