Once upon a time, a pin was born in the land of Pinterest. This pin promised a link of a 55 calorie Reese's treat with no sugar. It was a popular pin, and grew and multiplied by the thousands. 

The only problem with the pin was that it was wrong. It linked to my Reese's peanut butter cup bar recipe and there is nothing low sugar or low calorie about them.

I first heard of the pin from visitors like you who linked back to the Reese bars recipe on this site and noticed that it was loaded with sugar, sugar, and more sugar. That's because it is, and I never made claims that it was anything but completely unhealthy for you. At first I apologized for the errant pin, and then I tried to track it down. Unfortunately, comments don't repin with pins and there is no way to find every wrongly described pin. Plus, I think people found it a little creepy when I would track down their pins and comment on them.

I finally decided that if so many people were coming here for a sugar-free or reduced calorie version of the recipe I have pictured, I should just come up with one. So off to the kitchen I went. 

Now, I'm not a dietician or a diabetic. Let me state that right off. I make no claims to being an expert in the area of sugar-free or reduced calorie foods. I do like to eat, though, and I do know what a Reese's peanut butter cup tastes like. And that's what I tried to make with this recipe. It took some experimenting and I'm pretty pleased with how it tastes. In the notes after the recipe I also explain my ingredient choices so that if the ingredients in here don't work for you, you can hopefully modify it in a way that will.

A final note is that these bars as written are 125 calories for a roughly 2" square. Using a zero calorie sweetener brings them down to about 100 calories each. It is still more than the 55 calories that the incorrect pin states. Peanut butter itself has about 100 calories for 1 tablespoon so to make it 55 calories I'd either have to reduce the amount of peanut butter and have it not taste as rich or make the serving size ridiculously small. I decided not to do either. 

(Almost) Sugar-Free Peanut Butter Cup Bars

By HeatOvenTo350 Published 02/08/2013

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup plus 2 Tablespoons Truvia baking blend (see notes)
• 2 1/2 cups Cheerios (see notes)
• 1/4 cup melted butter or melted coconut oil
• 1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons natural peanut butter (Just peanuts, no added salt or sugar)
• 5 Sugar-free mini Hershey's chocolate bars (see note)

Instructions

1. Add Truvia to a blender and pulse until it becomes a powder. Pour into a medium bowl.
2. Add Cheerios to blender and blend until powdered. Pour into bowl with Truvia and mix.
3. Stir in peanut butter and melted butter and stir until combined. Pour into an 8x8 baking pan and press down.
4. In a double boiler or microwave on low power, melt chocolate. Pour over the top of peanut butter mixture. Refrigerate until firm. Cut into 16 pieces and serve. (For a creamier chocolate topping, although it adds more calories, mix in a tablespoon of peanut butter to the melted chocolate.)

Yield: 16 servings
Prep Time: 10 min
Cook time: 30 min (chilling time)

Each bar:125 Calories, 15 g carbs, 8.5 g fat, 2.75 g protein.

Notes:

Why Truvia? 
After tasting a few sugar substitutes I decided on Truvia. I used a Truvia baking blend in this recipe, which does have sugar. If you are looking for a sugar-free instead of reduced sugar dessert, you can use 100% Truvia instead. I would just reduce the amount of sweetener used by a tablespoon. For other sweeteners, you might have to experiment a little to get the correct sweetness. 

 Why Cheerios? 
 It's not just because I have a baby and therefore Cheerios are all over my house. My original recipe has graham crackers in it. They provide structure to the bars. I didn't want to just mix peanut butter with a sugar substitute and call it a day since that isn't a Reese's cup to me and frankly it would be a gooey mess. So I looked around for a low sugar substitute for the graham crackers and came upon Cheerios. Using Cheerios, though, means these aren't 100% sugar free. They have about 2.5 g of sugar for the whole batch.

What if I don't like sugar-free chocolate?
If you would prefer not to use the sugar free chocolate but still want a sugar free chocolate flavored topping, try making this coconut oil substitution: equal parts coconut oil and cocoa, sweetened to taste with your favorite sugar substitute and a pinch of salt. You will likely have to melt the coconut oil or warm it a bit to mix everything in. This will set up rock hard in the fridge so it's not the ideal texture but it is another substitute you can use if you don't want to use sugar-free chocolate. It might be easier to let the peanut butter part of your treats set up in the fridge while making the coconut oil/cocoa mixture. If you let the coconut oil/cocoa mixture cool until a paste consistency you can top the treats right before serving. I found the calories in this substitution to be similar to the sugar-free chocolate when I was doing calculations online.