Café au Lait Bars

These are those wonderfully delicious coffee bars that everyone raves about once they’ve tasted a bite of them.  First dubbed, “Nathanael’s coffee bars” because of my brother’s love and fascination for them, they were later simply referred to as “those scrumptious coffee bars” that everyone asked the recipe for.  So if you haven’t tried the café au lait bars, now is the time!!

3 large eggs

1 ½ cups sugar

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

¾ cup butter, melted

2 cups flour (I use whole wheat pastry flour)

½ teaspoon salt

¼ cup instant coffee crystals, or 3 tablespoons espresso powder

¼ cup heavy cream

Mini chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 325 F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch pan.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs until light-colored and thick. Add the sugar, beating until glossy and stiff. Add the vanilla and melted butter, beating to combine. Stir in the flour and salt.

Set aside 1 ½ cups of the batter. Stir together the coffee crystals and cream and add to the remaining batter. Spread the coffee batter in the prepared pan.

Now, I’ll try to explain how I did the next step. Fill a Zip-lock bag with the reserved batter. Snip off one corner, and pipe three lines of batter the length of the pan. Use a knife to pull the batter from side to side through the coffee batter. Optional: Sprinkle with chopped walnuts.

Bake the bars for 30 minutes, or until the sides just barely pull away from the edge of the pan and the center is set. Remove them from the oven and immediately with sprinkle mini chocolate chips. Cool before cutting.

Makes 24 bars