Tracy Covell, my good old friend from Poughkeepsie, New York, and I loved a lot of the same things. We loved our family, our friends, the outdoors, we adored homeschooling our children and we both loved everything about FOOD! Funny how a lot of our homeschooling field trips and unit studies revolved around food, too! Tracy, always thin, looked like Jodi Foster. Me? Not so much (I was (am) neither thin nor do I look like Jodi Foster), but I never held it against her! Tracy and I would often share recipes, talk about food, imagine food and of course we ATE food together all of the time! I remember how Tracy would hide a box of Girl Scout cookies in her room for us so that we could snack on them while our boys played upstairs. Hey! I had two growing boys and she had three…there was no room to share! Tracy made these bars often and they were one of our favorites! I think of her every time I make these!

Bars

1 cup rolled oats
1 cup boiling water
1/2 cup softened butter
1/2 cup raw honey
1 large egg
1 cup King Arthur’s unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup smooth or chunky peanut butter (We like Smart Balance or Smucker’s Natural)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Frosting

1/3 cup peanut butter
2 to 3 tablespoons of milk
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (Tracy used carob chips, which were delicious!)

Use the butter wrappers to grease a 9 x 13-inch baking pan. Preheat your oven to 350 F.

Soak your oats in boiling water. Ina bowl, cream together the softened butter, honey, egg, peanut butter and vanilla extract. Add the soaked oats to the mix and stir. Add the flour and baking soda and combine. Spread the mixture out in a 9 x 13-inch baking pan and bake for 10 to 15 minutes. Let cool.

While cooling, heat up your milk. Add peanut butter and chocolate chips and stir until everything melts together.

Once the bars have cooled a bit, spread the chocolate frosting over top and refrigerate or freeze until completely cold. These bars tastes best to our family when they are nice and cold and I love them with a good cup of tea…they’d be even better if Tracy were here! : -)