Congo Bars

Sponsored posts are at the top of the search returns. Following that are a few highlighted images. What's next, according to Google, are 35-million results for the term Congo Bars. You wrongly assume they are all recipes but most give details about a country in Africa or places where you can get a beer. 

There are some differences between the recipes. There are calls for coconut here and graham crackers there. But those are not the recipe followed by your grandmother. She is from the generation of women who married men coming home from World War II. She drank. She smoked. She kept it simple. Her recipe had been little more that chocolate chip cookie dough baked in a brownie pan. 

Two and a quarter cups all-purpose flour. The process was even less work intensive than if you were making cookies. There is no need to dollop that dough. No need to make multiple batches. You just plop it into the glass square baking dish and let it cook through – and maybe even a bit longer than that. 

One teaspoon baking soda. She had four kids. Your mother was her third child. The rest were boys. The rest are your uncles. They all love your grandmother. They all love your grandfather. But they were distant as parents. It is hard to know if that parenting style is better or worse than over-involved parents today. But they were always good to you. They regularly would give you and the other grandkids Congo Bars. 

One teaspoon salt. Grandma loved salt. She would put it on meat. She would put it on salad. Later in life she would eat only the saltiest of snacks. She smoked half a pack of cigarettes a day from age 16 to when she died at age 89. Her tongue was as worn as a Wisconsin winter driveway. It was black-top needing salt for traction. 

One cup butter. That’s two sticks. Softened. Your butter is hard. You know what she would do during her wait. She would have a smoke. She would have a drink. The martini would come in a plastic tumbler with ice cracked by a spoon in my grandfather’s palm. Maybe she wouldn’t finish the recipe. Maybe she would wait for the next day. 

Three-fourths cup sugar. Your grandfather would fall asleep in his chair. Your grandmother would yell at him to go to bed. If she had the salt-tooth, he had the sweet-tooth. His leaded crystal jar would be filled with fun-sized Milky Way bars until the day he died. He would empty it and fill it. It was a regular entry on their grocery list: Halloween style bag of chocolate bars. He also liked Snickers and Three Musketeers. You also love that genre of candy. 

Three-fourths cup brown sugar. Your grandma would find candy wrappers in his pockets and scold him. He could have had worse indiscretions. There was no drinking to hide. It was all in the open. Even then the worst thing he would do is fall asleep in the chair. At least, that’s what you know as a grandchild. 

One teaspoon vanilla extract. Who doesn’t use imitation? Your grandmother couldn’t afford the real stuff and neither can you. There is no real reason to fret about it. Your grandmother liked the feeling of status that comes from security, not from the contents of her spice cabinet. Besides, she would rather spend her money on olives than on vanilla beans. 

Two large eggs. You question if that is too many eggs or not enough. It might not cook right if the ratio is off. Two many eggs and it might be cakey. Two few and it might be fudgy. Who cares? That is what you ask yourself on your second drink. Your grandmother preferred vodka martinis. You only have gin. The eggs go in. By the time your grandmother was your age she already had all four of her children. Who care how many eggs go in?  

Two cups chocolate chips. Might as well make it three. She went heavy on the chips because she went light on the nuts. She went so light that she didn’t add any at all. Your complaints as a child convinced her to leave out the walnuts and forget about pecans.  

Preheat oven to 375. You forgot to do that as well. What’s another martini? You do the trick your mother taught you: using the paper butter wrappers to grease the brownie pan. You press the dough into the square. You can’t remember if that looks right. 

Put in the oven for 9-to-11 minutes. You are making the Congo Bars to fill your cookie jar. It’s your cookie jar because your grandmother – it's previous owner – has passed away. It used to be filled with store-bought cookies exclusively from the cheapest no-name brands. But you loved those cookies because you could eat as many as you wanted. Grandma wasn’t going to slow you down. You didn’t tut-tut her drinking like your mother did. 

The pan is out and resting. Once cooled you cut it like she always did. Not into even 4-by-4 pieces. Instead she liked it divided into 2-by-8 pieces. That way they had a long finger-like quality. It was the better shape for coffee dunking. Congo Bars and coffee. Coffee and cigarettes. 

But it doesn’t taste right. It tastes fine but it does not taste correct. You immediately know why. You even suspected this outcome before you started baking. 

The last thing your grandmother even baked was Congo Bars. It was years before she died but she would lose her mobility, keeping her out of the kitchen. She gave the Congo Bars to your mother and your uncles. You remember them talking about it – how when they opened their Tupperwares and had to leave them outside. The Congo Bars were saturated with smoke. They were then and they always had been. No one had fully realized until they were eating them outside of her cloud. 

You don’t smoke but you have a pack. You take a drag on a cigarette before taking another bite. Still not as good as her recipe.