By Kevin Williams
This is a deliciously easy recipe for chess bars. Trying to find a baking activity to do with my 3 ½ year -old daughter Aster is challenging enough, but then I have to find something relatively fast to prepare because 9-month-old Bea gets impatient fast. So I settled upon a recipe for chess bars from an 8-year-old Amish girl, Anita Hostetler, from Fredonia, Pennsylvania. This is a perfect recipe for a kid, and adults will like to eat it.
Chess Pie Bars...the recipe didn't call for sprinkles, but Aster did...probably anything we make for the next 10 years will have sprinkles...
I didn't realize until we were in the middle of preparing it that we only had whipped cream cheese on hand, not the "brick kind", so I decided to take my chances and use the whipped and it turned out just fine. SIGH, I also realized halfway through that we didn't have powdered sugar. So it was Dad to the rescue delivering some powdered sugar. Here's a video snippet of Aster starting to make the recipe which I think she called "Chest Mix Bars".
Aster hamming it up in the kitchen!
Anyway, once you have the ingredients, it doesn't get any easier than this. And if you have ever tried chess pie before, you'll agree that this is a pretty good replica of the pie's taste in a bar form.
- 1 box of yellow cake mix
- 1 egg
- 1 /2 cup margarine
- 3 eggs, beaten
- 8 ounces of cream cheese
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- Mix the first three ingredients until blended but still crumbly.
- Press into greased 9 X 13 inch pan.
- In a separate bowl, mix the eggs, cream cheese, and powdered sugar.
- Pour over "cake mix crust."
- Bake for 40 minutes.
Other easy bars:
Vanilla Crumb Bars (these are awesome!)
Chocolate Chip Marshmallow Bars
Amish Raspberry Bars
Anne K Jantzen
Thank you Aster for the great recipe!
Kevin
She had fun eating them!
Jo
Fyi google how to make powdered sugar...I recently discovered if you run out just blender regular white sugar 1 cup with 1 tsp cornstarch (or omit cornstarch).
Kevin
Thanks, Jo, that is a good tip to know!