Black and White Cookie Bars

Generally, I like to keep my recipes pretty simple, for a few reasons:

· Who, really, has a lot of time on their hands to spend hours on a dessert recipe?

· Even if you do – is that how you want to spend your time? I LOVE baking, but I do not want to spend my day in the kitchen, especially if it’s a nice day.

· Finally, while there are exceptions to every rule, I’ve found that in general a recipe does NOT have to be difficult in order to be delicious. In fact, some of my favorite things to make are ridiculously easy but taste fantastic. Don’t confuse effort with quality. There…that’s my life lesson for the day, both in and out of the kitchen.

These bar cookies fall into the “really easy to make but filled with flavor” category. People will think you spent a lot of time on them, but you didn’t. And I certainly won’t tell them.

Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

· 1 ¾ cups crushed Oreos

· 8 T butter

· 1 cup shredded coconut (sweetened)

· 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

· 1 cup white chocolate chips

· 1 cup walnut pieces (not full walnuts and not chopped into tiny pieces – more like halves and thirds)

· 1 can (14 oz.) sweetened condensed milk

· 1 t vanilla

Directions

Take a 9” x 9” pan (or something similar in size) and line it completely with aluminum foil, so that the foil hangs over the edges. As always, this makes cleanup super easy.

Take your Oreos and crush them so that you get 1 ¾ cups. You can either do this with a small food processor (which is what I do), or put them in a gallon-size plastic bag and roll over them with a rolling pin. Place the crushed Oreos in a small bowl and set that aside.

Melt the butter and mix it with the crushed Oreos.

Pour the mixture into the lined pan and press down with your fingers. Not too hard, just enough to create a base…basically, this is your crust.

The rest is really easy…you’re basically just pouring.

Spread the shredded coconut evenly over your crust.

Next, evenly spread the semisweet chips, then evenly spread the white chocolate chips and finally the walnut pieces.

Press down softly with your fingers.

Last but not least, open the condensed milk and put the vanilla directly into the condensed milk and mix them together. Pour the mixture evenly over everything. That’s it in terms of prep – really easy.

Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes, until the condensed milk is set and is a nice, delicious-looking golden brown. Cool the entire pan on a wire rack. This is one that you shouldn’t cut until it’s completely cool – what I do is let it cool on the rack for a while, then put it in the fridge for a little bit.