With school starting and everyone revving up to wake early in the morning, I thought that some peanut butter bars would be the perfect thing to share with everyone. These bars are fantastic to pack in a lunchbox for either school or work, and they double as an extremely tasty dessert.
Chocolate and peanut butter is just a plain classic combination. Everyone seems to love it, and it’s always a hit when I serve it to guests. The bitter dark chocolate plays with the sweet peanut butter fudge filling – giving a great balance in the flavors. Everyone would reach for these over a Reese’s PB Cup any day!
Yields 8 Peanut Butter Fudge Bars
The Preparation
Crust:
- 1/4 cup butter, melted
- 1 cup almond flour
- 1 tablespoon erythritol
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- salt, to taste
Fudge:
- 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
- 1/4 cup butter, melted
- 1/2 cup peanut butter
- 1/4 cup erythritol
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/8 teaspoon xanthan gum
Toppings:
- 1/3 cup low-carb dark chocolate, such as Lily's, chopped
The Execution
1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Melt 1/2 cup butter. Half will be for the crust and half for the fudge. Combine the almond flour and half the melted butter.
2. Add erythritol and cinnamon, then mix together. If you’re using unsalted butter, add a pinch of salt to bring out more flavor.
3. Mix until even throughout and press into the bottom of a baking dish lined with parchment paper. Bake the crust for 10 minutes or until edges are golden brown. Take it out and let it cool.
4. For the filling, combine all the fudge ingredients in a small blender or food processor and blend. You can use an electric hand mixer and bowl as well. Make sure to scrape down the sides and get all the ingredients well combined.
5. After the crust is cooled, spread the fudge layer gently all the way up to the sides of the baking dish. Use a spatula to even out the top as best you can.
6. Just before chilling, top your bars off with some chopped chocolate. This can be in the form of sugar-free chocolate chips, sugar-free dark chocolate or just good old dark chocolate. I used Lily’s Stevia Sweetened chocolate. Refrigerate overnight or freeze if you want it soon.
7. When cooled, remove the bars by pulling the parchment paper out. Cut in 8-10 bars and serve! These peanut butter fudge bars should be enjoyed chilled! If you take them to go, make sure to carry them in an insulated lunch bag to keep them firm.
This makes a total of 8 servings of Keto Peanut Butter Fudge Bars. Each serving comes out to be 342 calories, 33g fats, 5.7g net carbs, and 7.3g protein.
| NUTRITION | CALORIES | FAT | CARBS | FIBER | NET CARBS | PROTEIN |
| 1/4 cup butter | 407 | 46 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.5 |
| 1 cup almond flour | 648 | 56 | 24.6 | 14.6 | 10.1 | 23.5 |
| 1 tablespoon erythritol | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon | 3 | 0 | 1.1 | 0.7 | 0.4 | 0.1 |
| — salt | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream | 202 | 21.5 | 1.6 | 0 | 1.6 | 1.7 |
| 1/4 cup butter | 407 | 46 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.5 |
| 1/2 cup peanut butter | 759 | 64.5 | 25.8 | 7.7 | 18.1 | 32.3 |
| 1/4 cup erythritol | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract | 6 | 0 | 0.3 | 0 | 0.3 | 0 |
| 1/8 teaspoon xanthan gum | 2 | 0 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0 | 0 |
| 1/3 cup low-carb dark chocolate | 292 | 29.9 | 37.4 | 22.5 | 15 | 0 |
| Totals | 2738 | 264 | 91.4 | 45.9 | 45.4 | 58.5 |
| Per Serving (/8) | 342 | 33 | 11.4 | 5.7 | 5.7 | 7.3 |
Keto Peanut Butter Fudge Bars
Ingredients
Crust:
- ¼ cup butter melted
- 1 cup almond flour
- 1 tablespoon erythritol
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- salt to taste
Fudge:
- ¼ cup heavy whipping cream
- ¼ cup butter melted
- ½ cup peanut butter
- ¼ cup erythritol
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- ⅛ teaspoon xanthan gum
Toppings:
- ⅓ cup low-carb dark chocolate such as Lily's, chopped
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400F. Melt the butter, reserving half for the crust and half for the fudge. Combine almond flour with half of the melted butter.
- Add the erythritol and cinnamon and mix together. If using unsalted butter, add a pinch of salt to bring out more flavor.
- Mix until smooth and press the dough into the bottom of a baking dish lined with parchment paper. Bake the crust for 10 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Remove from the oven and let cool.
- For the filling, combine the fudge ingredients in a small blender or food processor and blend (alternatively, use a hand mixer). Make sure to scrape down the sides and ensure the ingredients are well combined.
- Once the crust is cooled, gently spread the fudge layer all the way up to the sides of the baking dish. Use a spatula to even out the top.
- Just before chilling, top the bars off with some chopped low-carb chocolate. Refrigerate overnight or freeze if you want to serve them sooner.
- Once chilled, remove the bars by sliding out the parchment paper. Slice and serve!
Perfect timing! Just this morning, I noticed Lily’s chocolate at Whole Foods and was wondering what fun things I could do with it.
I’m going to try making these crustless to have a new fat bomb variation.
Yum. Made these last night! What size pan are you using?
A few changes I made (just out of convenience):
I ended up using a glass bread pan because I didn’t have anything smaller than s giant cookue sheet. I also didn’t have any parchment paper so I just buttered my pan.
I had one little piece of 85% dark chocolate and crumbled it by putting it in a ziplock and rolling a rolling pin over it.
I cooked my almond crust at 350 for 20 min since I already had something baking in the oven at that temp. Mine was a little thicker because of the size of my pan and turned out great.
The fudge… I keep thinking I should freeze it and just eat it as peanut butter ice cream. Yum
Tastes great!
Thank you for this recipe. This is pretty good and I’ve made this multiple times. I just tweek mine a bit. Instead of erythritol I use Stevia and skip the xantham gum. I sprinkle sugar free chocolate chips on top instead of using Lily’s Chocolate. I top it off with whipped cream (mix 1 cup heavy cream; 1 TBSP sugar free vanilla pudding). Yum!
I really love these bars. I did however skip the cinnamon the second time I made them and instead added a little extra salt to both the crust and the filling. Plus I added a little vanilla extract to the crust. I wanted a little more of a cookie taste. I just wish they didn’t take so long to cool! 🙂
I just made this and it’s delicious! Just the filling alone is amazing and satisfies a craving for something sweet. I had to use glucomannan since I didn’t have xanthan gum and I left out the cinnamon. It turned out great. (Wish Lily’s made milk chocolate chips)
Glad to hear you like it! I’ll keep that in mind for if anyone needs a substitute for xanthan 🙂
These look great although when I check your net carbs I’m calculating s total of 39 for a total of 4.87 per square? Either way I’m still making them!!!
Hey Andrea – it may be because of the erythritol, which I don’t calculate. Erythritol isn’t processed by the human body and is generally passed through urinating (without passing the blood barrier during digestion). There’s a page I wrote on the “best and worst low carb sweeteners” – I’d highly recommend checking it out!
I’m not sure what I did wrong. Mine so don’t look like yours! My crust is super thin and the peanut butter mixture was pulling up the crust. It also felt like there wasn’t enough to cover the crust. It was a giant mess 🙁 what peanut butter do you use? Yours looks so smooth and creamy. Mine is sticky and chunky!
I’m not too sure either. The crust will definitely be thin, but you can make a tiny bit more of it if you found it difficult to work with. For the peanut butter, the easiest to get would be Skippy all natural. Make sure the ingredients are just peanuts and salt.
I’m not sure we have Skippy peanut butter here in Canada, but I will try a smooth natural peanut butter next time. Either way, the bars were ridiculously good! <3
That should work – and glad you like them. Let me know how batch #2 turns out! 🙂
I think you’ve got the nutrition facts wrong on here. The first line for almond flour stats is way off. One cup of your almond flour has 640 calories, 56g fat, 12 carbs? No way. Despite that, no carbs are calculated for the almond flour used! I use Anthony’s blanched almond flour at 2g net carbs per 28g or one cup.
This was using almond meal, which (in error of myself) is incorrect. I interchange these terms quite freely and I will definitely specify from now on. You can see the type of almond meal here: https://www.bobsredmill.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/thumbnail/2010×1890/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/4/9/4998c164_naturalalmondflour_rs_hr.jpg
This was using almond meal, which (in error of myself) is incorrect. I interchange these terms quite freely and I will definitely specify from now on. You can see the type of almond meal here: http://www.bobsredmill.com/…
First batch came out thin but perfect. Will use a smaller tray. I didn’t have cinnamon powder so I ground cinnamon sticks with my coffee grinder and as a result had some coffee grinds in the mix. Wow! Coffee grinds gave it some kick.
Whoof – sounds like it. Hope you liked them either way!
This recipe is awesome. I made these a couple of times. Always good. I used English Toffee flavour sucralose syrup to flavour the peanut butter mix. I am thinking of setting some nuts and/or sesame seeds in the peanut butter mix alone, like a fudge bar.
rying to do low sat fat keto due to a genetic cholesterol issue.. just as an experiment for several months… womdering if substituting olive oil for the butter and low fat cream cheese for the heavy cream would still result in a decent consistency and taste. May try it but would appreciate any input.
I think it would. I’ve used olive oil in place of other fats many times during baking and had great results. The cream cheese should also work.
I tried these and they turned out great, just like the pictures! And they taste even better than i imagined! Thank you 🙂
I don’t mean to be critical, but I think your macros may be off for this
recipe unless I’m missing something. “1/4 cup Butter, melted” is
listed twice (once for crust, once for filling) but with different
calorie counts on each listing. I’m guessing 400 calories is the correct
number for this ingredient. Keep up the good work – love the recipes,
and can’t wait to try this one!
Thank you! I will get this fixed today. 🙂
These are dangerously delicious! I made them last night and was so sad I had to wait for them to chill before eating. It was worth the wait. Yummy!
Hopefully not TOO dangerous! Hahah.
What size baking pan? I didn’t see that. Sorry if I missed it!
I think it’s an 8×8!
The picture shows a rectangle and another poster made it sound like she used an 8×8 and the crust was too thin. Before I waste the time and ingredients, I’d like to know what size the pan is for sure.
It’s possible it was an 8×6 (we made this recipe many years ago and don’t have the same equipment), but I have made this in an 8×8 and it turned out fine as well.
My base started cracking and coming apart as i spread the topping. Using an 8×8 meant i had to spread it all much thinner than I was expecting. Got me much less of a batch than I hoped I would get for the calories. Dunno if I’ll make this again or not.
I’m sorry to hear that George 🙁
I made these on Sunday and have been eagerly awaiting the time in the day when I can eat one. These are so delicious and single handedly helping me stay within my proper macros. THANK you for this amazingly tasty recipe.
Loved these