Oatmeal Chocolate Cookie Bar

Phew... Long time no bake... I miss the carefree days when I could bake at any time. It's a bit hard now that I'm working again... But anyway I'm glad that this morning I was able to bake.

So... You must be wondering what spurred me to bake. Well... Actually it's a very important reason but might not be one that you wanted to hear. I have 7 eggs that are about to expire in a few days... Yup! Well I hate wasting ingredients so I decided to bake something for church.

I ruled out making cookies because most of the time you don't need eggs to make them. I figured that cakes would probably be my best bet for using the most amount of eggs. I didn't have a lot of time on my hands so I didn't want to make something too complicated like chiffon cake. I started to think about baking brownies... then changed my mind and thought that maybe blondies would be more interesting. But as I was looking at recipes for blondies, I came across this oatmeal chocolate cookie bar recipe which looked sooo yummy! Bingo... I had found my recipe for today...

I wish I halved the recipe because I ended up with a lot of leftover ingredients... I was only able to find a 9-inch round baking pan instead of the recommended 13x9 inch rectangular baking pan. I used 2 mini (3-inch) round baking pans and another 6 1/2-inch round baking pan to hold all the extra ingredients. I also cut down on the sugar and the oatmeal used because I ran out of both ingredients. The 9-inch version of the cake took longer than 25 minutes to bake... double the time maybe coz I put too much batter and chocolate... Think it would have worked better with a shallower pan. The 3-inch and 6 1/2-inch versions were fully cooked by 25 minutes.

I dunno if it's because I haven't been baking for a long time or I'm just plain klutzy (or both!) But this time while I was baking I burned myself twice and I sliced my finger on the edge of a can. -_-" Ouch!

Ingredients:
Cake:

226g unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar

2 eggs, at room temperature

2 tsp vanilla extract

1/3 cup milk

2 1/2 cups plain flour

2 1/2 cups oatmeal

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

Chocolate Filling:

300g sweetened condensed milk

76g unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

285g semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350F/176C. Grease a 13x9 inch baking pan.
2. For the cake, cream the butter with brown sugar.  Mix in the eggs. Then add vanilla extract and milk.
3. Slowly incorporate the dry ingredients and set aside the batter.
4. In a saucepan over medium heat, melt together condensed milk, butter, vanilla extract and chocolate chips.
5. Spread 3/4 of the cake mixture on the bottom of the baking pan, pour chocolate mixture, then spread the rest of cookie mixture on top in spoonfuls (won't cover completely).
6. Bake for 25 minutes. If the top is browning too much, cover it with aluminum foil. Let it cool completely before cutting into it.