Magic Bars

I made this recipe from a video on TikTok, and have tweaked enough that I’m comfortable sharing it here 🙂 These are quick and easy, chewy and rich. I wouldn’t have touched them with a ten foot pole when I was a kid but I can’t get enough of them now!

• 1/2 cup butter, doesn’t have to be room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
• 1 can sweetened condensed milk
• 2 cups chocolate chips, I used semi-sweet but you can use whichever chocolate you prefer
• 1 cup shredded coconut, I like the medium one, not fine or coarse
• 1 cup chopped nuts, I like walnuts in this recipe because I just love walnuts but chopped pecans would also be good

Place the butter in a 9×13 dish, dark non-stick metal or glass. Put it in the oven and turn the oven on to 350F. As the oven heats, watch the pan and once the butter is melted or almost melted, take it out of the oven. Don’t let it get too bubbly or browned – better to have some melty bits than to cook off some of the butter.

Sprinkle the graham crumbs over the butter, and use a fork to mix and flatten, to make a base for the bars that is even and goes out to each corner.

Pour the entire can of sweetened condensed milk over the base as evenly as you can. Scrape out the can to get every delicious bit! I then put the pan in the oven for 3-ish minutes to make sure the sweetened condensed milk spread out across the base. It’s hard to spread it when it’s room temperature, this extra step helped.

For the last three ingredients, you’ll sprinkle them in layers, one at a time. I did the coconut first, then the chocolate chips and then the nuts. Some recipes have you do the chocolate chips first, then coconut and then nuts, but I found this made the bars messier when you were serving them.

Put the pan in the oven and bake for 28-30 minutes, until the bars are golden but not too dark at the corners and edges. Remove the pan from the oven and using a non stick spatula of any kind, work your way around the surface pressing the bars together. I found this extra step also helped make the bars easier to serve, it packs the nuts into the warm chocolate. As the bars cool, everything holds together.

Cool the bars completely before serving, and I find they’re better if you have time to chill them and then bring them back to room temperature before serving. Overall they need to be kept in a cool place (outside our back door is perfect this time of year).