#79) Peanut Butter Blondies

This past summer has been quite important in my life - a perfect wedding day, an amazing honeymoon, a new SUV, and our first home.... Needless to say, with all the important things going on in our lives recently, my husband (oh that is so fun to say!) and I haven't had a lot of down time, and that means I haven't been in the kitchen a whole lot lately...

But, once we bought the house we decided we should make the kitchen somewhere we would go out of our way to spend time. How are we doing this? A new floor, a fresh coat of paint, and most importantly, a new stove... But not just any stove - this, my dear friends, is a CONVECTION OVEN! For those of you who are scratching your head and asking yourselves what on Earth I am talking about, let me tell you I was in the same state only a few months ago, until I started doing some reading about these amazing ovens. The fan in the back of the convection oven cirulates all the hot air in your oven so you get more even baking in less time. Still not convinved? What if I told you I baked 3 sheets of my chocolate chip cookies at one time and each sheet was perfectly baked to perfection? No burnt bottoms, no undercooked centres - just perfect crispy edges with chewy centres! Seriously, a baker's dream :)

Now on to the blondies - I cam back from our honeymoon in Quebec City with lots of neat ingredients to play with, but one of my favorite was the Belgian milk choclate chips I got at La Fudgerie. If you are ever in the area, it is well worth your time to stop in for a look. (The creme brulee fudge is out of this world!) So I toyed around with a couple of ides for these bad boys, but then decided it was about time for yet another peanut butter and chocolate combo. These bars are kind of like a peanut butter blondie dotted with creamy milk chocolate - are you drooling yet? I thought so!

Now I bet you wanna scroll down for the recipe, don't ya????

Well, I must confess that I have "misplaced" the scrap of paper this beauty was scribbled on, but I am sure all my wonderfully creative friends out there in cyberspace (yes, you!) can whip up something equally as good, or even better in fact!

Happy Baking :)