Pure Hunger

Family secrets. These are usually parts of yourself and your blood relatives you keep from others, ashamed, and embarrassed to even admit they are a part of your history. Family secrets that surround the making of food, specifically recipes that friends and co-workers try to coax out of you, are a treasure. Luckily, I like sharing secrets, at least the kind that concern food. You are about to be blessed with a fool proof cookie that will please any person at any party and will guarantee they will pull you behind closed doors and agree to name their first child after you just to know how to make these incredible little squares. Just pat them politely on the hand, give them your best smile and say “It’s a family secret”. After all, we are family, right? I beg you to never make these cookies when you are alone or plan to “just eat one” because this will be a test of wills that might challenge even those with saintly levels of self control. These cookies should be illegal, the euphoric effect they have is untouched. I’m sure you think I’m exaggerating. Well, give it a try and just tell me how it goes.

Ingredients

1/2 cup unsalted butter
1-2 cups finely crushed graham crackers
1 cup 60% bittersweet Giardelle chocolate chips
1 cup Nestle butterscotch chips
1 cup unsweetened coconut
1 can sweet and condensed milk
1 cup nuts of choice (I don’t usually add these)

Before you begin , I must make some notes on the ingredients. This combination of salty, sweet, bittersweet and unsweetened coconut is the best compliment of flavors in my book. You are more than welcome to play with ingredients. For saltier cookies, use salted butter. For a firmer base, use animal crackers or even chocolate wafers. If you want a sweeter cookie then use semi-sweet chocolate chips and sweetened coconut. For goodness sake, however, do not buy any cheap butterscotch chips…they are terrible and will ruin the cookie. Other than that note, make them, enjoy them and share if you are feeling saintly.

Preheat oven to 350 and put butter in square or rectangle or oval pan about 13x9. The smaller the pan, the thicker the bars. Put pan in oven while it heats up and let butter melt. Remove pan once butter has melted completely and browned just a bit.

Displace butter evenly in pan and then sprinkle crushed graham crackers over top to form bottom layer. Pick up pan and shake back and forth lightly from side to side to evenly displace.

Gently pour can of sweetened condensed milk over graham crackers so it covers them completely. Try not to get to close to the sides of the pan with the milk. Put layer of chocolate chips, butterscotch chips and then coconut.

Place pan back in oven and bake for 20-22 min until edges are golden brown and bars are soft in the middle. Remove from oven once done baking and let cool for 30 min. Gently run knife around edge of pan to loosen bars and make cut lines down the pan to turn into bars. Let sit another hour or put in fridge for quick cooling. Can be kept in fridge or freezer.