Chocolate Chip Cranberry Milk Bars

Corn harvest has finally gotten here.  It is no surprise that it is not a bumper crop for our area.  We have been in a roller coaster ride of weather that can be perfectly explained as "Feast or Famine."  Our area is either too wet or too dry.  I know what you are thinking...farmers are never happy with the weather, but seriously hear me out.  It rained almost the whole month of April and then it quit.  We may have gotten a few showers if we were lucky at isolated fields, but we were back in a drought.  Then the end of July came along.   Our area got close to 20 inches of rain over 3 weeks!  Now, here we are almost the middle of September and we haven't seen any rain for weeks and it is hot, dry and dusty again.

Well anyway, we are busy Picking Corn  and no, it isn't Sweet Corn.  It is always nice to have a sweet treat in the noon lunch boxes that we pack everyday.  I really love making bar cookies and if they have a little fruit in them all the better.

My son and I found the original recipe over on the Ocean Spray Website.  We changed a few of the ingredients around trying to make a recipe to compete at the county fair, but in the end he decided on a totally different recipe.

Chocolate Chip Cranberry Milk Bars

1 cup butter or margarine, softened

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

1½ cups quick or old fashioned oats

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 cup dried cranberries

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350*F.  Grease a 13x9 inch baking pan

Beat butter and brown sugar in large mixer bowl until creamy.  Gradually beat in flour and oats until crumbly.  Stir in morsels, cranberries and pecans; reserve 2 cups of mixture.  Press remaining mixture onto bottom of prepared baking pan.

Bake for 15 minutes.  Beat cream chees in small mixer bowl until smooth.  Gradually beat in sweetened condensed milk.  Pour over hot crust; sprinkle with reserved crust mixture.  Bake an additional 25-30 minutes or until center is set.  Cool in pan on wire rack.  Cut into bars.

Makes 36 bars.

What is your favorite quick treat for a special lunch treat?

-A Kansas Farm Mom