- Ever wish that a cookie could be magical?
Magic cookie bars are real.
They are so delicious,
filled with so many flavors,
coconut, pecans, peanut butter, chocolate, graham crackers,
the works, they're amazing
and just beyond easy.
Hey, you're watching Preppy Kitchen
where I John Kanell teach you how to make homemade dishes
to share with your family and friends.
These cookie bars are gonna be done in a snap.
So let's get started.
First off, I'm making a super easy graham cracker crust
but I always to add in a little of a nut
because I'm a nut.
First off, we're gonna make
a super easy graham cracker crust
however, if you watch this channel,
you know that I always add either pecans or walnuts
into my graham cracker crust
for extra depth of flavor
and a little bit more crunch.
Half a cup, in you go.
And you can kind of like eyeball it,
it doesn't matter.
You can add a little bit more,
you can add a little bit less.
Now I'm adding in eight and that's four,
which makes 12 graham crackers.
If you don't have graham crackers,
you could use Biscoff cookies,
any kind of general cookie will work for this.
One and a quarter cups ish
if you're measuring it out that way.
All right now, put this top on
and give it a whizz whizz whizz.
(whizzing)
All right, once you have a nice set of fine crumbs,
what you're gonna do is add in half a cup
or 113 grams of melted butter.
Pulse that in as well.
In you go, one last pulse.
You can of course do this in like a big plastic bag.
If you're adding nuts in,
give them a fine chop,
try and mince them up
and if you want,
you could do it all in a plastic bag,
just pour the melted butter in and mush it up
or you could transfer it to a bowl
and stir it together.
It doesn't really matter either way.
Let's give this a little taste
and see what it's like.
That's nice.
Magic cookie bars are pretty sweet.
So we're not adding any sugar into the base
and we're gonna add a little bit of sea salt on top
for some extra balance.
All right, now it's time to transfer this
to our prepared dish
but let's talk about that for a second.
You have a couple of choices on how to line it.
You definitely definitely want to line it
otherwise this will be a horrible sticky mess.
It'll be stuck in there
and not fun at all.
You could use foil
but if you use foil,
it can rip
and you get little cracks,
you get little wrinkles,
not the best deal.
Use parchment paper.
All you have to do
is get a piece, place your pan on here,
find the bottom and give it four snips.
One, two, three, four.
Now fold the edges.
It's just like wrapping half of a present.
Last one.
Now we can take our paper,
place it in
and it should just fall into place.
If it doesn't, you can refold or resnip.
We have a nice comfy cozy little place
for our magic cookie bars to sit.
If you see the paper is like really
just not staying up,
you can use a couple dabs of butter
but I'm not gonna worry about it.
All right, carefully remove that dangerous blade.
Once you learn your lesson, you never forget.
Right, dump this mixture in
and if you used a food processor,
you might have like a little pooling
of the butter in one place or another.
So just use a spatula
and kind of move it around a bit.
There we go.
Dump it all in.
And now spread it around.
This is basically just like making
any other graham cracker crust you've ever made.
And if you haven't made one,
it's a great place to start.
Now, use a flat bottomed glass or a measuring cup
and just press, press, press, press.
And the key is to press hard.
You really want to compact this into a crust
otherwise, it'll be very crumbly.
Press, press, press.
The last thing you want to do
is get the edge
and you can just drag your cup along the side
and for the very corners,
just use your fingers.
This is a really fun project to do with kids.
Mine are napping right now
so they can't help.
We have a little bit of extra time on our hands
so I made a cardboard castle
and they are totally into it.
I'm very happy, I love castles.
Just like when I was a kid.
All right, this is ready for the next step.
These magic cookie bars come together so quickly
and if you're missing any ingredients,
you can easily substitute.
Like let's say you don't have graham crackers
or any cookies at hand,
you could make a shortbread crust, so easy.
If you don't have chocolate chips,
use chopped chocolate,
sub in something else you like,
you could even skip the chocolate all together.
Now it's time to add our ingredients onto our base.
This is so easy and quick
and by the by, this tastes really similar
to a Samoa Girl Scout cookie
in case you're wondering.
It's actually my favorite Girl Scout cookie
although Thin Mints are a very close second.
So we have three quarters of a cup of chocolate chips,
three quarters of a cup of peanut butter chips
and three quarters of a cup of toasted and chopped pecans.
If you ever use nuts in a recipe,
I highly recommend toasting them.
Usually, it's like 350 on a baking sheet, 10 minutes,
mix 'em around every like four minutes
or three minutes or so.
Take those chocolate chips,
scatter them evenly over the surface.
If you love chocolate,
you could add a little bit more.
If chocolate's not your favorite,
add a little bit less.
This is like the most forgiving recipe possible
so even the measurements are super rough,
like you don't need to go the exact gram at all.
All right, so it's a little, that looks good.
Now, it's time for the peanut butter chips.
So scatter, scatter, scatter.
If you're not a fan of peanut butter chips,
you could use like toffee bits,
you could use white chocolate chips instead.
It's really like anything.
Or add more regular chocolate chips.
Now it's time for my favorite ingredient,
sweetened, shredded coconut.
I love this stuff.
Click up here for my German chocolate cake.
It is the best thing ever.
It's one of my favorite cake recipes,
even though, you know, I have many favorites.
Okay, you want about one and one third cups of this stuff.
However, you're using most of a package.
So less than seven ounces
or if you want to go crazy the full seven ounces.
It's really however much you like.
I love coconut
so I'll be very liberal with my measuring here.
Break it apart
and sprinkle it out.
It tends to kind of glom together in the bag.
What I look for is even coverage.
I want all the cookies to have a good amount
of this delicious coconut.
Now it's time for our pecans.
So once again, this is about three quarters of a cup,
roughly chopped.
I'm going crazy and adding the full cup.
I have good coverage,
all my ingredients are in place
except for the binding agent.
If you guys baked it right now,
it would be like a crumbly fluffy mess.
So we need to pour some delicious, delicious
sweetened condensed milk on here.
Pop a 14 ounce can open.
It's almost 400 grams.
Depending on which brand you use,
they'll be milky white or a little bit more caramel colored.
We're just gonna drizzle it over the surface now.
Try and get some nice even coverage once again.
Okay, I like to get all that can out of there because
there's always like a little bit of coconut
that's just kind of by itself
and I know that it needs that sweetened condensed milk
otherwise it might get burnt.
Okay, this is technically done
but I'm adding in one final ingredient
and that's because there's a lot of sweet stuff in here.
It's like sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet,
I want a little bit of balance in here,
that's why I added extra nuts
and on top, a scattering of flaked sea salt.
This is that Maldon sea salt.
You can get different brands
but they're like giant salt flakes.
So just a little goes a long way.
This also gives you like a nice crunch.
This is gonna go into the oven at 350
for about half an hour.
You're gonna see it turn like nice and golden
but it won't necessarily be set.
It has to chill first.
So into the oven and we'll be right back.
Okay, I ended up backing these for like 35 minutes or so.
I wanted to give them just a little bit of extra color
'cause that's the mood I'm in today and by the by,
I forgot to tell you the very last part of this
was to just sprinkle
some chocolate chips on at the very end.
If you forgot that, like I did,
you can just sprinkle them on fresh out of the oven
and it's totally fine
'cause it's super hot out of the oven
and they turn into liquid right away
and kind of glue themselves onto these bars.
So just FYI.
Afterwards, let them chill for two hours.
You can pop them into the fridge.
I just let them sit out at room temperature.
And now it's time to transfer.
And this is why it's so amazing
to have parchment paper at the bottom.
Just do a little test pull at the corners,
test, test, test, see if anything stuck
and if it didn't,
now you lift one end up,
pull the other end out
and there you go, how easy was that?
Sometimes recipes will tell you
to brush the inside of the parchment paper with oil.
But I found that is actually not super necessary.
See it comes right off
and now you're ready to chop, chop, chop
and get to eating.
You can cut these in whatever shape you want.
It could be triangles, little tiny bars or squares.
It's really how many people are you feeding
and what kind of portion control
are you trying to get them to buy into.
Okay, I'm gonna cut these into square
and they're easier to cut,
I find at room temperature,
because they cut really cleanly
but they're not super hard.
Now I know that I deserve the first piece.
Time for a bite.
These cookie bars are totally reminding me
of my childhood.
My mom actually never made them
but my friends mom's did.
So these would be like my snack at my friend's houses,
if that makes sense.
If you like this recipe,
check out my cookie playlist.
So many delicious cookies and cookie bars.
There's guaranteed to be several that you love.
Mmm, I love the coconut in this and the crunch.
It's so good.
If you like this video,
hit that like button and subscribe
and I'll see you in the next video.