TWD: Chocolate Oatmeal Almost Candy Bars

Well, with a title like that, who wouldn't want to make this?! It's almost health food what with the oatmeal and raisins and everything....

This is a bar recipe with two components that make three layers. It is very rich and pretty sweet. The good news is that a little goes a long way.

The base layer calls for a rather large quantities of the chosen ingredients. There's brown sugar, flour, oatmeal, butter, eggs, nuts, and some other stuff. The recipe calls for three cups of oatmeal alone. This is when I was grateful yet again for my KA stand mixer. It handled the job easily. The crust mixture is divided, and most of the mix is pressed into a 13 x 9 pan. The rest is set aside. The chocolate layer was pretty simple to make. I used a homemade double boiler (bowl over pan of simmering water) to melt chocolate, butter, and sweetened condensed milk (not to be confused with evaporated milk. I guess it's a common mistake because I see the warnings in almost every recipe that calls for one or the other.) You add chopped peanuts and raisins to that. I used a mix of almonds and peanuts because that's what I had. I did add the raisins, though other bakers were worried about the sweetness. The chocolate layer is spread over the base layer. The remaining crust mix is crumbled over the top. It didn't need a long bake, but it does require a long cool -- at least three hours.

See, Oatmeal! It's good for you!

Here's the whole pan.

This was my corner piece. It was excellent and chewy.

I cut mine while it was still at room temperature. It was easy to do. Much easier than when it was cold. We also ate it while it was still warm, though Dorie makes a case for eating it cold. I really liked it warm. I liked the contrast of the gooey chocolate and the crunchy top and base. Though, it was pretty darn good the next day right out of the fridge. It wasn't as sweet as I was expecting it to be. I wonder if I just used a different chocolate than some of the other bakers. It does make a lot, so half of my pan went into the freezer for later use. I could certainly see myself making this one again. I might play around with cappuccino chips to replace the raisins and using all almonds. Thank you Lillian of Confectiona's Realm for choosing this recipe. Go to her blog to see the recipe.