Chocolate Revel Bars

In the midwest, we have an entire category of dessert called "bars." I've been told you might recognize them as "cookie bars" or "squares," but really they're just bars, and they make up an entire category in my grandma's old tin recipe file. Pretty much any ingredient can be made into a bar: there are those based on cereal (Rice Krispie bars, Special K bars), fruit (rhubarb bars, fireside fruit bars), nuts (pecan pie bars), and of course chocolate. And as much as I love to roll my eyes at many of the '50s recipes handed down to me, lots of them are pretty darn good.

Chocolate revel bars have been a go-to recipe "to feed a crowd" in my family for as long as I can remember, and the recipe's origin had always been a mystery to me until last night. I'd imagined that one of my pioneering, intrepid ancestors had scraped together her nickles, gone into town and bought sweetened condensed milk and chocolate, donned her apron, mixed them together to discover that it's really really sweet and really really delicious, and then passed the creased and stained recipe card down to her daughter's daughters. But last night Ariel discovered a suspiciously similar recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook...so I guess my family didn't invent this one. However, the slight differences between the Better Homes and Gardens recipe and ours are an interesting history in themselves - along the way someone incorporated some extra butter, nuts, and chocolate, and added some salt.

As I said, this feeds a crowd - you bake it in a 10 x 15 inch jelly roll pan and could probably get 5 or 6 dozen bars out of it. And since this no longer a secret family recipe, I'll share it with you.

Dough part:
1 c butter, softened
2 c packed brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2.5 c all purpose flour (can sub with some or all whole wheat pastry flour, if you're into that sort of thing)
3 c rolled oats (calls for quick cook; I use normal with no problem)

Chocolate part:
12 oz chocolate chips
14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
1 c chopped walnuts or pecans (we've always used walnuts - optional of course)
2 tsp vanilla
2 T butter
1/2 t salt

Cream the butter and sugar, then mix in the baking soda, eggs, and vanilla. Mix in as much of the flour as possbile (it's quite thick by this point) and stir in the rest by hand. Stir in the oats (this takes a little muscle). Then, in a saucepan, melt together all the chocolate filling ingredients minus the walnuts. Pat the dough into the jelly roll pan (again, this requires some muscle), reserving as much as possible for the topping. Spread on the chocolate mixture, sprinkle with the walnuts, and then drop the rest of the dough on top in blobs for the topping - you won't be able to cover the entire surface but it'll spread a little and all turn out in the end. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.



Mixing in my beloved KitchenAid.



Another new toy for my birthday - a newfangled version of an old-fashioned nut grinder from my aunt. I'd never seen one, but apparently my grandma had one. It worked pretty well - a little finer than I would have liked for this purpose.



Spreading the chocolate filling.