Abracadabra!

I felt like baking something today, but wasn't sure what to do. But leafing through the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook, the Magic Cookie Bars recipe caught my eye. It's a bit of a stab in the dark, as there's the usual American-to-British unit conversion required, and also some ingredient substitutions to account for what you can get in the UK (and more importantly, what I had in stock). But we'll see how it goes!

Magic Cookie Bars

Ingredients

• 190g Plain chocolate digestives* (11 1/2 biscuits)
• 115g Butter
• 85g Chopped walnuts
• 80g Plain chocolate chips
• 110g Dessicated coconut**
• 1 can (397g) Sweetened condensed milk

Method

1. Crush the digestives.
2. Melt the butter and mix with the crushed digestives.
3. Press firmly into a 23cm square brownie pan.
4. Evenly sprinkle the walnuts, chocolate chips, then coconut over the biscuit base.
5. Pour the condensed milk over the top, spreading gently to cover completely.
6. Bake at 160C for ~30mins until light golden brown.
7. Remove and refrigerate until set before slicing and removing from tin.

*I would have gone with plain digestives if I had any in stock. I had to bump up the quantity of digestives by eye, as there's less biscuit per unit mass with chocolate digestives than plain ones.

**This is where I think I will have gone most wrong. The original recipe called for sweetened shredded coconut, and I didn't realise that dessicated coconut was different (it's dried out far more than shredded coconut). I'm pretty sure that I've used waaay too much coconut as a result. But dessicated coconut is unsweetened at least, so hopefully it'll still be okay.

Straight out of the oven:

Well, these turned out to be a surprise hit! I (inevitably) didn't have quite enough patience initially, and tried to retrieve a couple of pieces before it was properly set, which meant that the biscuit base just crumbled into dust. But despite that, these are really rather nice especially if you consider (a) how easy they are and (b) that it's made out of standard (at least for me) ingredients. The topping is a delight. The condensed milk turns into that gorgeous, gooey caramel than threatens to glue your jaws together, there's a bit of crunch from the walnut but not too much and then there's a little bit of chewiness from the coconut  - there might be a touch more coconut than perhaps there ought to be, but it's certainly not a problem. And all of that is balanced by the (relatively plain) biscuit base, which helps tone down the sweetness to more manageable levels and prevents the topping from actually gluing your jaw shut.

But while it's rather enjoyable and something that anyone with a sweet tooth (who doesn't object to coconut or walnuts) will appreciate, neither is it all that special. It's certainly not one of those sublime, delightful baked goods that gives you a moment of silent rapture - in many ways, it's rather ordinary. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Given how easy this was (and it was, indeed, extremely easy - with little washing up too!), I think it's a great one to keep in the repertoire. It'd be perfect for coffee mornings with friends, or maybe even as cycling/hiking food on the go (that is, assuming we'll ever be able to do those things again!).