I adore the combination of peanut butter, chocolate, and pretzels. I have plenty of recipes on this website filled with desserts combining the three! It’s the perfect trio. Salty, sweet, chocolatey, crunchy, peanut buttery, decadent. You’re going to start with a pretzel crust. Yes, a buttery crust made from pretzels! Crushed pretzels, sugar, and melted butter. You’ll need 1.5 cups of crushed pretzels, which is about 3 cups of actual pretzels. Grind the pretzels up as much as you can. And make sure no one is sleeping in your house when you do so. Hard pretzels in a food processor is L-O-U-D. Mix the ground up pretzels with the melted butter and sugar and press into your pan. Bake the crust for about 10-12 minutes as you prepare the filling. This salty pretzel crust can also be used for my S’mores Brownie Pie, Key Lime Pie Bars, or these Snickers Cheesecake Bars (yum!). The pretzel crust is sort of crumbly. There’s no way around it. Pretzels cannot be ground up as finely as graham crackers, so just expect a few crumbs when you cut into and bite into these bars. Have a napkin handy! The cheesecake filling is easy peasy. Cream cheese, egg, sugar, vanilla extract, and creamy peanut butter. Beat all that together until smooth and mix in several Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (the more, the merrier!). Pour on top of your pretzel crust. Bake for 30-ish minutes. Chill the bars for 3 hours before cutting into squares. Waiting is torture. Pure torture. A little chocolate drizzle is the cherry on top, no? Melt a few chocolate chips with some peanut butter (yep, more peanut butter), and drizzle on top of each cheesecake bar. The drizzle is completely optional, but I never say no to more chocolate and peanut butter. These cheesecake bars are so good it’s scary. If you do NOT like sweet and salty desserts, this recipe is not for you. The crust is made from salty pretzels—so yes, the crust will be salty! The peanut butter cheesecake filling is undoubtedly the creamiest cheesecake on the planet. What I love most about these bars is how thick the filling is. You won’t even believe it will fit into a tiny 8-inch square pan. It will practically fill the entire pan. These bars are so thick and monstrous. It’s glorious. They’re crunchy, creamy, salty, sweet, and dangerously addicting. Quite frankly, I think I found my new favorite dessert! And yours, too. 😉
