Homemade Nutty Bars: layered crisp wafers with cooked-sugar peanut butter filling in tempered chocolate

In one container, combine the cooled melted butter, the water with two tablespoons of it replaced by egg white, and the vanilla.

Mix the dry ingredients together, cake flour for tenderness, powdered sugar, cornstarch for crispness, baking powder for leavening and a little salt, then add them to the liquid.

Pour the batter onto the waffle iron on the diagonal so the squares run at an angle, a little oil if needed, and cook until done; lift out with tongs.

Cut each wafer into two or three pieces side by side with a cutter, then dehydrate them in the oven.

Blend the peanuts with a pinch of salt and a little squeeze of honey into a smooth, loose peanut butter.

Keep the dehydrating wafers flat under an open rack so moisture can still evaporate.

For the remaining wafers, whisk a little more baking powder, powdered sugar and egg white into the batter.

Put the sugar, corn syrup, vanilla, a little extra salt and a few tablespoons of water in a saucepan and cook to 248, backing off the heat as it nears the temperature; let it boil about 15 seconds more.

With the bowl on a towel, stream the hot syrup into the peanut butter with a hand mixer, then beat in the butter, to a soft-dough texture.

Turn out onto parchment and roll almost paper-thin.

Check the wafers after the better part of an hour; turn them over where the bottoms have not dried, set them directly on the oven rack at the highest warming setting, 190, under a rack to stop curling, about 20 minutes more.

Lay 18 wafers in three rows of six on the filling, peel off the parchment and cut them out.

Group the pieces in threes by size, stack them with a lid, and shave the sides even, which helps fuse the layers.

Melt the semi-sweet chocolate over water, no higher than 120.

Cool it at room temperature to 82 to 84, using an ice cube against the side of the bowl to finish.

Bring it back up to the working temperature of 88 to 90 over water heated to about 125 and then turned off.

Dip and roll each bar in the chocolate, tapping and scraping off the excess so the waffle pattern shows.

Refrigerate to set.