Chocolate Oatmeal Almost-Candy Bars

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Lillian of Confectiona’s Realm. She picked the Chocolate Oatmeal Almost-Candy Bars, which are just my kind of cookie: rich, multi-layered, and decadent! These would be the sort of thing that I would choose! To see the complete recipe, visit Lillian’s blog. This is a good one so you’ll certainly want to get the recipe.

This cookie starts with an oat, brown sugar, and peanut base. You use half of that for the base of the cookie and the other half for the top. In between is a layer of chocolate, sweetened condensed milk, peanuts and raisins. The raisins are a bit different, and I used dried cranberries instead. They are a very substantial cookie, and the pan is really heavy when you get everything together.

There are a little messy to assemble, but they are worth it! After you take them out of the oven it is critical that you let them cool completely. I let them cool for about 3 hours and they were still too soft. I cut the pan into 8 big pieces, removed them from the pan and then stuck them in the refrigerator for a couple hours. They were easy to cut at that point. So I recommend putting the bars in the refrigerator before attempting to cut these.

I like these a lot, but I’m not surprised since they are exactly the kind of cookie that I like making. I’m not 100% sold on the raisins/dried cranberries in the middle layer. They add an unexpected texture to the mix. I had thought about substituting something else, but I couldn’t think of anything to add that wasn’t already there! These make a lot of cookies since I cut them small, so I am sending the leftovers to work with my husband. I hope they like them as much as I did.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 114 and 115