Chocolate Revel Bars. One of our all-time favourite chocolate treats. A rich chocolate fudge filling sandwiched between layers of brown sugar and oat cookie dough.
Packed lunches, picnics, bake sales… these bars are your friend. They are super easy to make, they slice beautifully, they travel well packed in old biscuit tins or tupperware and they’re easy to eat – no plates or cutlery required!
Chocolate Revel Bars
Ingredients
Cookie Dough:
160g soft butter
350g brown sugar (light or dark or a mixture of both)
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
280g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
170g oats (either quickoats or regular rolled/porridge oats – whatever you have to hand)
Chocolate Fudge Filling:
1 x 397g tin of condensed milk (note that it’s condensed milk we want here – not evaporated!)
300g chocolate (I favour chocolate with 50% cocoa solids – but any milk or dark chocolate will work fine)
25g butter
Directions
Beat the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl for 2 or 3 minutes until light and creamy.
Add the rest of the cookie dough ingredients – eggs, vanilla, flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and oats – and beat again on a low speed (so that flour doesn’t go everywhere!) until thoroughly combined. This is your cookie dough.
Preheat your oven now to 180C.
Line a 23cm x 33cm (9 x 13 inch) pan with baking paper. I usually press one long sheet of paper into the pan and leave some “overhang” – this extra paper helps to remove the bars from the pan later.
Take about 1/3 of your cookie dough (i.e. about 350g) and set it to one side – this will be the top layer of your Revel Bars. Press the rest of the cookie dough into the prepared pan. Spread it out and flatten it with your hands as best you can, kind of “smooshing” the dough right out to the edges and into the corners.
Now, put all the chocolate filling ingredients into a bowl and melt together in a microwave – heat for 30 seconds, stir, heat again and repeat until all the chocolate is melted and you have a big bowl of velvety smooth chocolatey gorgeousness that you just want to eat by the spoonful!
Pour the unctious chocolate mixture over the biscuit dough in the pan. The mixture should be thick but spreadable. Use a spoon to spread the chocolate out to the edges and into the corners.
Take the remaining biscuit dough and pinch off small pieces. Scatter these pieces of dough all over the chocolate mixture in the pan, leaving some patches of chocolate still visible.
Bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes – no more! The bars will appear underbaked at this point, but will “set” as they cool. To get really clean slices, leave to cool in the tin until completely cold – this will take several hours. Then slice and serve.
Store in a tin or tupperware container with a tight-fitting lid. These bars keep for at least a week at room temperature in our kitchen.
NOTE: This recipe is adaptable to a gluten-free version. Simply use a gluten-free plain flour and make sure you use gluten-free oats. (While oats themselves don’t contain gluten, many are processed alongside wheat products, so make sure the oats you use are certified gluten-free.)
Dedication: For Lisa – with thanks again for the motivation to post!!
The Irish Kitchen 
This is fantastic, jc. I can almost taste them. Thanks so much. Will let you know how i get on!
LikeLike