Marshmallow Peanut Bars.

A dear friend of mine shared this recipe with me and I had to share it with you. I just made it and let me tell you it's worth running 1 hour or more on the treadmill!

Ingredients Base: 1 pound peanut butter sandwich cookies (Nutter-Butter, I assume) 1 stick butter, melted Topping: 2 cups peanut butter chips 2/3 cup light corn syrup 4 tablespoons butter 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups miniature marshmallows 2 cups dry roasted peanuts 2 cups Rice Krispies cereal

Directions Pulverize cookies in food processor until fine crumbs. Drizzle in melted butter and process until crumbs clump together. Press crumbs into bottom of lightly greased 13x9 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Melt peanut butter chips, corn syrup, 4 tablespoons butter and extract in the microwave, just until chips are melted and mixture can be mixed smooth. Spread about ½ of the melted mixture over the hot baked base, being very careful, as the melted mixture will tend to pull away the crust. Work with covering the crust just as soon as the pan is removed from the oven, and it will work best. Use a gentle hand to spread the melted mixture over the crust! Top melted peanut butter mixture with marshmallows and return pan to oven. Bake until marshmallows puff, about 2 to 4 minutes, then remove pan from oven. Don’t let marshmallows brown or they will become crunchy when cooled. Toss remaining melted peanut butter chip mixture with the dry roasted peanuts and cereal. Drop heaping spoonfuls of peanut/cereal topping over the hot marshmallow layer, then spread it out with a spatula (spray spatula with some nonstick spray to prevent marshmallows from sticking to it). This gets rather tricky, as the mixture will want to pull away the marshmallow layer. My advice is to work quickly on a HOT crust, to keep it all as soft as possible. Have the peanut/cereal topping ready as soon as your remove the crust/marshmallow layer from the oven, plop the topping on the puffed marshmallows and use your buttered fingers or spatula to spread it over the marshmallows gently. If you have some "holes" on the coverage, it's really quite all right - it will still taste fine! Cool bars completely before cutting with a knife that has been coated with nonstick spray.