Cappy's Magic Cookie Bars

For those of you who follow our Blog, you may have noticed that I said, "Peggy had the pleasure of having her very first Smore" on our road trip this Fall.

My marshmallow eating, chocolate loving sweetie pie was only allowed this treat 'cause we discovered these amazing gluten-free graham crackers.

These aptly named crackers are very good, and it didn't take me long to realize this opens the door to several of my favorite treats.  It took us awhile to find these graham crackers when we got home.  For some reason true gluten free products are not as common in the deep South.  Peggy finally found them at Whole foods right before Christmas, so I got her to buy a couple boxes, so I could make for her one of my Dad's favorite things to make during the holidays.  My Dad was a very good Cajun 'man cook', but baking wasn't his strong suit.  He was a wizard at the black iron, campfire, bbq outdoor cooking, but didn't bake much.  He had two or three simple things he liked to bake and one of his favorite things were Magic Cookie Bars.  What follows is the way he did it with a couple tricks of my own.  Just in time for Christmas, this treat is really worth trying.

Take a 9x13 inch baking pan and put a half a stick of butter in it.

My trick is to put the pan with the butter (unrapped of course) in the oven while ya preheat the oven to 350 F.  While the oven is heating and the butter is melting "smush up" 1 1/2 to 2 cups of graham crackers (we just used the whole box).  Once the butter is melted I lean the pan on all sides to coat the pan and sprinkle the cracker crumbs in and smooth them evenly around with a fork.

My dad usta just dump the next three ingredients in the pan and attempt to smooth them out with the fork but I find it much easier to dump them in a bowl stir them up and then apply them to the pan.

Daddy always said, "Ya add a heaping cupful" and like him, I sorta put the cup over the bowl and pour 'til the cup fills up and runs over, so if ya wanna call it a cup and a half go for it; it aint an exact science.

After adding the pecans, chocolate, and coconut to the bowl, I toss them together and sprinkle them into the dish on top of the graham cracker crumbs .

This is what it looks like all spread out.  Next comes the sweetened condensed milk.

Not only is it fun to make, it's fun to sample as you go.

Afer ya get the part that didn't wind up either on you, or in you into the oven, ya bake them for 25-30 minutes.

I took the pan out to cool and later when I went back to check on them one of the corners had disappeared.

Can't hardly blame my poor wife.  Can you imagine what it must be like to go 20 years with out graham crackers??  

Well, if you can, you really need to revisit our simple Christmas treat.  This is our Christmas gift to those of you who must live life gluten free.  Merry Christmas and may God Bless.