Wendell's Chess Bars
There's not a woman in East Tennessee who hasn't tried them!
The ingredients:
One box of cake mix (flavor, your choice. I like a chocolate)
One stick butter, melted
Three eggs
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
16 ounces powdered sugar
Optional: one tablespoon of peanut butter
The recipe:
Preheat oven to 350. Mix box cake mix, melted butter, and one egg. Take the thick dough and press it into the bottom of a greased 13x9 pan. Mix two eggs, cream cheese, powdered sugar, and one tablespoon of peanut butter together. Pour mixture evenly on top of cake mix. Bake for 45 minutes. Let set for at least two hours before cutting—ideally, overnight.
The story:
Ok, so this is going to sound shady, but these chess bars have gotten around.
If you asked me what my dad’s signature recipe is, I would either say his stuffed deer tenderloin or these bad boys. The deer tenderloin was a twice or thrice-a-year special occasion thing. These? This recipe is the hussy of Kirkland-family recipes. In short, this is what I call a flirting dessert. My dad, God love him, loves a woman’s attention. And as the old saying goes, a way to a woman’s approval is through a 13x9 pan of a cream cheese-based dessert.
Growing up, the chess bar recipe was rolled out early and often, specifically if an attractive lady was involved. Elementary school teachers? They got a whole pan of these every Christmas. The women at the bank? Dad would whip a batch up for them almost monthly. My boss at Quizno’s in high school? Also hit by a pan of chess bars. Every time I turned around, Dad was making a pan of chess bars for some woman in our larger social circle. My Mom, God love her too, wouldn’t complain much so long as Dad made us a pan as well. Am I saying that these chess bars held my parents’ marriage together in the late 90s and early 2000s? Perhaps. The lore behind how often my dad would trot these out is complex and incredible, and at one point, a significant chapter in my therapy journey!
The real secret behind these is how customizable they are. This particular recipe is my favorite—a combination of a chocolate cake bottom and a creamy topping that just slightly has a tinge of peanut butter flavor, but let your imagination guide you here. Around the holidays, sub in spice cake for the base and these become suddenly festive. Change out the chocolate for strawberry around Valentine’s Day and you have Lisa from the bank’s favorite version. Lisa, I still think about you!
With a total active time of about 10 minutes, this is one of those easy Southern dump and go recipe that turn out to be pretty impressive. Make them for someone you love, or someone you shouldn’t love but do anyway. But dear God, if you’re making them for yourself, do it sparingly. I’m convinced these are the pathway to discovering a third type of diabetes.