Here’s How to Make Chubby Hubby Bars

Yes, it’s true.  One of the best Ben & Jerry’s flavors has been transformed into an amazing cookie. This is great for a number of reasons, most importantly that I can eat them with reckless abandon without the risk of brain freeze. For those of you who aren’t aware, chubby hubby ice cream contains chocolate, peanut butter, and pretzels in vanilla malt ice cream. Since I have had no luck finding this ever elusive “malt powder”, I made them without the malt.

The bar form, my friends, is cookie dough, pretzels, chocolate, caramel, and Mini Reeses. You could translate it any number of ways, these are just the ingredients I happened to use. In an effort to keep them slightly less messy, I mixed the caramel with the chocolate ganache coating. Unfortunately, that caused the chocolate to not harden completely, but you live and you learn, I suppose. They are delicious all the same. Over at Cookies & Cups they did a layer of caramel instead, which was a bit messier than I was looking for, but I posted that version below as an option. Also, you may notice the actual ice cream does not have caramel, so just go ahead and skip it if you want, I won’t tell.  🙂

My main issue, aside from the chocolate that didn’t want to harden, was the fillings. When I was spreading the cookie dough the fillings all tended to stay towards the middle. So when you’re pouring from your mixer bowl into the baking pan, I recommend doing four or five large “dollops” of dough, and then spreading them in their own areas to ensure equal distribution of the candy add-ins.

Chubby Hubby Bars

• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temp
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp coarse sea salt
• 1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped pretzels
• 1 (8oz) bag of Reese’s Mini cups (or 2 cups coarsely chopped full sized Reese’s)
• 1 (14 oz) bag of caramels, unwrapped + 2 Tbsp water * (This is the 2nd option; see note)

Ganache Layer:

• 1/4 Cup of creamy peanut butter
• 2 Cups of semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/4 Cup of butter
• 2 Tbsp of heavy whipping cream

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Line a 9×13 pan with foil or parchment and grease lightly with cooking spray.
3. Beat together your butter and sugars until light and fluffy, approx 1 min.
4. Add eggs and vanilla, mix until incorporated.
5. On low speed add in your salt, baking soda and flour, mixing until just combined.
6. Slowly add in your Reeses and Pretzels, mixing until evenly distributed.
7. Spread in your prepared pan* (see note, no pictures because that part was extra messy and BF may have killed me if I got cookie dough on his fancy schmancy camera) and bake for 25 minutes.
8. Let cool completely. Approx 30 minutes to an hour.
9. When cooled, melt your caramels and 2 Tbsp water in a microwave safe bowl stirring every minute until melted.
10. Pour over your bars.
11. Chill in fridge for 15 minutes to set caramel.
12. Make ganache: Take a small saucepan and a glass or heatproof bowl. Simmer water and place the bowl over the saucepan. Melt the ganache ingredients together and stir to combine. Pour over cookies. Place whole or crushed pretzels on top of chocolate, if desired.
13. Put back in the fridge for at least 30 minutes or until chocolate is set.
14. Cut into squares when ready to serve.

Notes:

*I mixed the caramel with the chocolate ganache coating. Unfortunately, that caused the chocolate to not harden completely, but you live and you learn, I suppose. 

* I recommend doing four or five large “dollops” of dough, and then spreading them in their own areas to ensure equal distribution of the candy add-ins.