These bars are soooooo good.  But how can you go wrong with a crumbly, buttery base covered by a thick layer of fudgy chocolate? And top it off with some more buttery crumbs, chocolate chips, and chopped walnuts… I’m sold.

I adapted this recipe from the Nestle website.  It originally was supposed to be made in a 9″x13″ pan, but I made a few modifications to fit what I had on hand.  I reduced the amount of crumble mixture to fit my smaller pan and used both milk chocolate and cocoa in the condensed milk layer.  Quite simply put, they were heavenly!

So, without further ado… here’s the recipe!

Chocolate Crumb Bars

adapted from verybestbaking.com

Ingredients:
•    3/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
•    1 cups all-purpose flour
•    1/3 cup granulated sugar
•    1/4 teaspoon salt
•    200g milk chocolate, chopped up, divided
•    1 can (14 oz.) Sweetened Condensed Milk
•    2 tbsp cocoa powder
•    1/2 cup chopped walnuts, optional

Directions:

1.    Preheat the oven to 350F and line and grease a 9”square baking tin.
2.    Cream the butter so it is smooth.  Combine the sugar, flour and salt (I used salted butter so I didn’t add the salt) and mix with the butter until crumbly.
3.    Press two thirds of this mixture onto the bottom of the pan and bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes, or until just turning golden brown.
4.    Meanwhile, melt 100 g of the chopped chocolate, the cocoa and the condensed milk in a saucepan over low heat.  Once melted and smooth, pour over the still hot crust.
5.    Mix in the remaining chocolate pieces and walnuts in with the leftover flour mixture.  Crumble over the top of the chocolate layer.
6.    Bake in the over for 20 minutes or until the centre is set.  Cool on a wire rack.

NOTE: I found it much easier to slice if I waited until it was completely cool, then flipped over the bar on a cutting board and peeled off the tin foil.  Otherwise, the crumbly bottom had a tendency to stick to the tin foil as I tried to cut it.