Ingredients: butter, sugar, icing sugar, eggs, cocoa powder, chopped walnuts, coconut, graham wafer crumbs, vanilla extract, mint extra, custard powder and finally, semi-sweet chocolate squares. If you have 'em, add white chocolate chips too.
Directions: Take your butter out of the refrigerator. If it is like mine, the sucker is as hard as a rock. DO IT NOW.
OK. You need a double boiler for this stuff. I quickly realized the difference between a double boiler and a double BROILER, the first time I tried to make this. The oven's broiler is the set of heat elements inside the oven, at the top. Not what you want.
A double BOILER is a pair of pots that fit into one another. You place the larger one, with hot water in the bottom third of it, onto the largest set of elements on the top of your stove. Turn it on to about half. You may find that later, you'll need to turn the heat even lower. If the water starts to boil and spill out, that means you have to turn the heat down and maybe, remove the pots for a minute while you catch up with your melting, not burning, ingredients.
The pot that is the top half of the double boiler pair, fits snugly on top of the larger pot with the water. You can, and probably should, buy a pair of pots that are meant to do this. Sorry.
Melt: SUGAR 1/2 cup This is the regular, in your coffee stuff.
BUTTER 1/2 cup too. Try micro waving if its still hard.
EGGS two With a little practice, you can break them both at once; one in each hand. If you have an accident, pour table salt on the mess and it wipes up easily with a paper towel.
COCOA POWDER Add five tablespoons.
VANILLA EXTRACT One teaspoon; the smaller measurement.
If you need, turn down the heat now. According to the recipe, you should stir until it is evenly mixed. Try to get rid of most of the lumps.
Now, in this order:
WALNUTS 1/2 cup of chopped. You can buy them that way. Do it.
COCONUT one cup. I don't like this stuff but the recipe calls for it. Argh.
CRUMBS two cups. Again, you can buy the Graham wafers, either chocolate or vanilla, already in crumb form. Beauty.
Stir. Keep an eye on the heat. You'll want this icky stuff to be cool enough to handle.
Once it is well mixed, dump it into a large pan, filling about a third of the container. If you are taking it to a party (or Merivale United Church), use a disposable aluminum tray that you can get at any grocery store.
So, you've dumped this stuff into the pan, and now you are going to get your hands sticky. Press this first layer firmly into the bottom of the pan or else it may fall apart when it is cut. (When that happens, it does not look professional. OK?)
Clean the double boiler, then put it back to work.
MELT: BUTTER 1/2 cup
ADD: CUSTARD powder, four tablespoons. That's custard; not mustard. Sounds the same and they are both yellow, but that's where the similarity ends.
ADD: MILK six tablespoons. When this mixture is like a "thin custard", whatever that is, then...
ADD: ICING SUGAR four cups. Yes, 4 cups.
The mixture should be yellow when you finish and you should be able to smooth it over the first layer with a knife. If the mixture easily pours, then you probably need more icing sugar. Put it back on the heat. The only bad effect though, will be when you go to serve the bars. The yellow, middle layer, might squish out he sides when you try to cut the individual servings. Big deal. It will still taste great.
I know the icing mixture is correct when I stop stirring for a few seconds, shake the pt, and little cracks appear on the surface of the mixture in the double boiler pot. Pour this onto the first, dark layer, and then refrigerate for 15 minutes, or so.
While the pan with two of the three layers, is cooling in the lower part of the fridge, (where you keep your store bought chocolate milk), clean up. Use a spatula first to eat all of the left over icing sugar mixture. Very fattening. Wash the pot again, and clean the messy counter, since most of the cooking is done.
OK, lets pretend that 15 minutes has gone by. Now, in the clean pot, with the element turn down to no more than a 1/4 heat...
MELT: CHOCOLATE 12 squares of semi-sweet chocolate. That is a box and a half people.
BUTTER: Whatever butter is left from one of those big rectangles of butter that you started out with, just dump into the pot. Use it all. The more butter, the creamier the top layer will be. Use at least 1/2 a cup of butter.
MINT EXTRACT: Add a half a teaspoon only because this is potent.
Slowly melt the chocolate and butter mixture because the choc may burn if the heat is too high. Once melted, pour over the pan that you've retrieved from the fridge. You are almost done. Place the pan with all three layers back into the refrigerator.
Do you have any white chocolate chips? If you remember, in half an hour, drop them into the pan while it cools. Classy touch.
Just remember to take the pan out of the fridge about an hour before serving to make it easier to cut. Otherwise, the top layer is too hard and it just cracks or even separates. You can even freeze this stuff for years.
Good luck. Especially with the middle layer of milk and icing sugar.
Originally Posted : 310104
