Baked Bars (aka Seven Layer Bars)

I've been eyeing all of the bar cookies on our recipe schedule for Baked: New Frontiers in Baking with a little dismay. The bars segment of the brownies and bars chapter probably contains the highest percentage of recipes I would never choose to make of my own accord within any of the Baked cookbooks. I love bar cookies, but this particular set I've never found especially motivating (which explains why I've owned this cookbook for 10 (!) years but haven't baked any of the bars yet). We're starting off with the bar I like least: the seven layer bar. I've never been a fan of these, because I've never had one that wasn't cloyingly, tooth-achingly sweet. Still, the fact that I was the one making the bars meant I would have more control over how sweet my version of the Baked bars turned out to be....

The Baked bar is like a seven layer bar, except that it has eight ingredients (which is actually true for many seven layer bar recipes) and more importantly, the toasted coconut flakes are part of the crust not the filling.

Otherwise, the basic premise of a seven layer bar applies: super simple preparation, no stand mixer required, just mix up a crust, then layer in the filling ingredients, and bake.That's one of the selling points of a seven layer bar - they're supposed to be mix & dump, essentially, with a little waiting time in between each step.

First, grind up a bunch of graham crackers (in this case, about 2.5 sleeves worth of Honey Maid grahams went into my crust, ground into a fine powder by my Vitamix dry container). As the grinding process chugs along, melt two sticks of butter and toast 2 cups of shredded coconut. [Note: the recipe calls for sweetened coconut - I used unsweetened because I wanted these to be not super sweet.]Toss together the fine graham cracker crumbs and the toasted coconut, then pour in the melted butter and use your (clean) hands to combine everything, then press the crust into a greased 9x13-inch pan. This took about 15-20 minutes total, including the 10-ish minutes necessary for toasting the coconut (but not counting the time for the oven to preheat).

Chill the crust for 15 minutes, bake for 10 minutes until golden brown, then let the crust cool completely (minimally 30 minutes). During this process, you may need to fend off complaints about how long the oven needs to be on for these Baked bars (preheating + coconut + crust + bars = more than 90 minutes).Matt and Renato helpfully point out in the notes that you shouldn't replace the semisweet chocolate chips because they are necessary for balancing the intense sweetness from the condensed milk, butterscotch chips, and white chocolate. With this in mind, I elected to use Guittard bittersweet chocolate instead of semisweet chocolate, hoping the bittersweet chocolate would be an even better foil for the sweeter elements in the Baked bar. For the white chocolate, I went with Ghiradelli, and the only butterscotch chips I could locate easily were Nestle Tollhouse (I should have ordered Guittard's butterscotch chips online, but I couldn't imagine a need for six bags worth).

The recipe calls for 26 ounces of condensed milk, but that's not a single can quantity I could find anywhere, so I used two 14-ounce cans. I considered weighing out the 26 ounces instead of using all 28 ounces, but decided the extra 2 ounces probably wasn't going to hurt the bars any...

After layering the toasted, finely chopped walnuts, bittersweet chocolate chips, white chocolate, butterscotch, then condensed milk on top of the cooled crust, the bars bake for another 30-40 minutes. I baked mine for about 35-36 minutes, at which point the top was quite deeply browned. The condensed milk bubbles up a lot - as the bars cool, the bubbles form some interesting patterns that look disturbingly like thinly sliced onions on top of a casserole (according to certain people in my house anyway).

We cut into these about 3 hours after they finished baking, at which point the chocolate was still somewhat melty and the condensed milk was a bit gooey. Everyone "enjoyed" them, but agreed that they were not the best seven layer bar they'd ever had. In particular, because the coconut went into the crust itself, rather than being part of the filling, and because the crust already had about double the amount of graham cracker typically called for, the ratio of crust to filling was almost 1:1, rather than the 1:3 ratio that everyone was expecting (and apparently prefers). Perhaps because of that thicker crust, the base of these was quite crumbly on day 1 (the whole bar firmed up nicely by day 2). I liked these more than I like more seven layer bars, in part because I'd intervened in the recipe and subbed out sweetened coconut with unsweetened and semisweet chocolate with bittersweet, I didn't find the Baked bar to be cloyingly sweet. It's still quite sweet, but I didn't have a stomach-ache after two bites. I definitely preferred these Baked bars after a full overnight rest, once the filling layer was completely set. I've had this experience with a lot of bar cookies I've made recently, where the bar tasted better on day 2 than it did on day 1. The only bar cookie I can think of where that isn't the case is Back in the Day Bakery's drunken blondie. With that said, honestly I wouldn't make these again, unless someone specifically requested them, but that's just because this really isn't my favorite variety of dessert.

Head over to Baked Sunday Mornings for the complete recipe and to see what the other bakers thought of this Baked bar!