German Chocolate Bars

 I made these for LeDonna's birthday, in the past I've made her just about every German Chocolate thing I can think of - bread, cupcakes,  - this year I googled for some other ideas and found this one for bars (pretty sure I'm going to have to go back to regular ol' German chocolate cake next year, I'm out of different ideas hahahaha). Oh, and Happy Birthday Mary - I know you also love German Chocolate so here ya go, enjoy these virtual bars :) 

The base is a cake mix but you only add an egg and melted butter, it turned out very much like brownies which I found really interesting, maybe I'll try this again without the German chocolate topping and see what it's like. 

Crust:

• 1 box devil's food cake mix
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
• 1 large egg

Filling:

• 1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 t. vanilla
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1 cup shredded coconut
• 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350'. Grease or spray a 13x9 baking pan.
2. In a medium bowl, mix together the cake mix, butter and egg, and press flat  into the bottom of the prepared pan. Bake for 7 minutes and remove from the oven.
3. While the crust is baking, mix together the sweetened condensed milk, vanilla, egg, pecans and coconut. Pour evenly over the warm crust and sprinkle evenly with the chocolate chips. Bake for 24-30 minutes until the top is light golden brown.
4. Remove from the oven and cool completely before cutting into squares.

My note: the crust is barely set after 7 minutes and when I added the filling it started sinking into the cake base. I then figured out to spoon small amounts of the filling all over the cake and gently smooth with a spatula. Don't dump all of the filling in the center of the cake! 

recipe found here