Chocolate Chip & Toasted Pecan Bars

Name: Chocolate Chip & Toasted Pecan Bars
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 30 min
Ingredients: 1 cup pecans; 4 tablespoons unsalted butter (softened); 2 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil; 1/4 cup granulated sugar; 1/3 cup brown sugar; 1 egg; teaspoon A pure vanilla extract; 1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour; 1/2 teaspoon baking soda; 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt; 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

December 3, 2016 By Dan from Platter Talk 33 Comments

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Chocolate Pecan Bars Recipe from Platter Talk

Chocolate Pecan Bars are perfect for the holidays or any special occasion.

Chocolate Pecan Bars showcase the classic taste pairing of quality chocolate chips that are combined with the savory goodness of toasted pecan halves.

Chocolate Pecan Bars

Use a pie pan or skillet to give your pecans or other nuts a quick toast in a hot oven.

I review recipes every day and as the old adage goes, “We eat with our eyes first.” When I first came across this recipe for Chocolate-Chip-Cookie Bars from Food & Wine, it wasn’t a question of if I would be making them but rather when. And then, I poured water over may MacBook Pro laptop.

These Chocolate Pecan Bars are made in a 9 x 13 inch baking pan.

It wasn’t intentional, needless to say, yet I felt like one of our six boys when they do something without appearing to give any thought to the consequences of their actions. A half eaten candy cane on our new sectional in the basement, leaving a new fishing pole out on the cottage pier overnight, ruining a very expensive piece of equipment because of a carelessly placed bottle of water. Oh wait. That was me. The father. The parent. The one who should have known better.

Quietly, I grieved both for the loss of my tethered computer and also for the egregious apparent absence of responsibility on my part. To teach myself a lesson, I forbade myself from buying a new laptop. Instead, I would have to use my old computer, a MacBook Pro that is nearly ten years old.

Chocolate Pecan Bars can be made ahead and stored in an air-tight container for up to five days.

I tried. I gave it my best shot. Through multiple technical freezes, using long-outdated editing software, and a hard drive laden with angry birds and other such games that were apparently gifted from our kids, I have managed to put together a couple of posts for Platter Talk: Our Fall Shepherd’s Pie and now, these wonderful Chocolate Pecan Bars.

The Essentials for these Chocolate Chip & Toasted Pecan Bars

A 9 x 13 inch baking pan
Parchment paper
Good chocolate chips (We use Ghiradelli Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips)
Pecans
Whole wheat pastry flour (We used regular whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour would work too.)
An Egg
Pure vanilla extract
Granulated and brown sugar
Baking soda
Butter

We made these on the first (but snowless) weekend of December at our small lake cottage in the middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin. It’s often a bit of a challenge when preparing food in our kitchen there. We might have a necessary part of any given recipe on hand and more times than not, we might not. On this day, we had no parchment paper and thus we used some aluminum foil that I treated with a non-stick spray and this worked perfectly when it was time to invert the finished product from the baking pan.

Chocolate Pecan Bars Recipe from Platter Talk

To evenly distribute the dough within the pan, we used a double rolling pin. It’s a handy kitchen tool and one of my favorites that is great for spreading pizza dough, filo dough, and various dough and batters like the one we were working with in this Chocolate Pecan Bars recipe.

This post features a delicious baked cookie-bar and a small but expensive life lesson. “It happens,” as Forrest Gump was known to say. Using an old laptop and substituting tin foil for parchment paper, we are still able to crank out some delicious recipes to share with you and these Chocolate Pecan Bars are a pretty good example of such. Give these a try and if you make a mistake now and then, don’t be too hard on yourself. Instead, turn your oven on, grab a baking pan and some good chocolate chips. Thanks for reading Platter Talk, it truly means the world to us. -Dan

A glass of cold milk is optional for these Chocolate Pecan Bars but we highly recommend it.