Super Bowl Bars…A Dessert so Good it’ll Knock Your Lights Out

          

“You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” – Frank Zappa 

I drank the kool-aid. I have cheered and screamed at a television set in a living room covered in beer stains. I have shushed people talking at crucial moments. I have excused myself for another heaping portion of “crack dip,” during the third viewing of the new Taco Bell commercial. I went to the Victoria’s Secret Pink store for the sole purpose of buying a sexy jersey. I have worn this jersey multiple times. I have become a football fan.

Obviously love can cause one to do crazy things. My past relationships have all involved some sort of new obsession or hobby, just another thing to allow us to use the royal “we;” a way of speaking that generally gets me talking about “our nausea.” However, football has actually become something I have started to enjoy independently of my boyfriend. To the point where I can tell you who’s playing at the beginning of each week, and where I can accurately name quarterbacks without having to discreetly Google it on my blackberry. (Yes, I still own a blackberry)

So, when the Super Bowl came around this year and I found out I would be performing in a show that night I had three different questions come along with my dissap-anger (the feeling of both disappointment and anger, resulting in a salty-blueness that everyone around you can sense, but that nobody can do anything about)

The questions were this: 1) Why are we having a show on the Super Bowl? 2) Who the hell would come to this except for people who forgot that they bought tickets on the night of the Super Bowl? and 3) What am I gonna bake for Davis to take along to the party I won’t be able to make?

The other two questions were pretty much answerable, though they were rhetorically asked a lot backstage and in the theater throughout the day. So I stuck with what I could easily answer myself, and decided to riff on a recipe from the Loveless Bakery in Nashville.

These bars have been renamed by me as Super Bowl Bars, however, their Loveless name is Magic Bars, and I do believe this recipe has a bit of magic in it. “Why?” you ask. Well, these bars are so good that if your football-loving boyfriend forgets them in the apartment when he heads off to the party, he will actually head back and get the tin they’re in, missing the Super Bowl kick-off, just so that the rest of the people can enjoy them when he gets back. So bake these with caution, because they are gonna cast a spell over anyone who eats them ;)

Super Bowl Bars

Ingredients:

2 cups chocolate graham cracker crumbs

1 stick plus 1 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted

1 cup walnut pieces

1 cup sweetened shredded coconut

½ cup semisweet chocolate chips

½ cup white chocolate chips

1 14-oz can sweetened condensed milk

I've been reading How To Cook Like a Rockstar by Anne Burrell and so now I'm a little obsessed with Mise en Place. 

Directions:

1.     Preheat the oven to #50 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease an 8X8 square baking dish.

2.     Throw the cookie crumbs and melted butter together in a bowl and use your hands to toss the crumbs and butter together until all the crumbs are moistened.

3.     Press the crumbs into the bottom of the baking dish in an even layer.

4.     In another bowl, toss the walnuts, both chocolate chips and coconut until well mixed. Top with the can of condensed milk and toss the ingredients together until they are all mixed.

5.     Push the condensed milk mixture onto the graham cracker crumbs and spread it out into one layer.

6.     Bake the pan for 20 minutes. The sides should be bubbly and browned.

7.     Remove the pan from the oven and set it on a rack to cool completely.

8.     Once the bars are completely cooled, slice into equal bars and use a thin spatula to move gently from the pan to a serving plate. The tops will always be gooey, so you want to be very ginger with these little squares.

Just another quick note: these bars went insanely fast, so if you want to make sure you have a couple left over, they can be easily refrigerated for a few days.

Enjoy these with a nice, tall glass of beer (preferably a rich, hoppy stout…my boyfriend, we’ll call him Davis, because that makes it easier, and it’s his name…says that Founder’s Imperial Stout is the way to go…so, yeah…I ate mine with a glass of chocolate milk that I blew bubbles into, but that’s just me)

Til next time,

D