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Sometimes, the best desserts are the ones you don’t have to adapt.  Of course, I had to adapt this one a little; the recipe I started with many moons ago used flour to make the bottom layer, but that was easily left out.

These bars are the sort of thing that seem like they shouldn’t be delicious, yet they are.  If you like coconut, but your sweetie doesn’t, they’re also a great way to get some dessert snackies all to yourself for a few days!  🙂  They don’t take long to put together and bake, but unless you want to be eating goo (hey, sometimes you do) you want to let them cool at least an hour before even attempting the arcane task of dividing such a great mass of deliciousness into something resembling bars.

Seven-layer bars were also one of the first dessert-ish things I attempted, back in the day, not long after my diagnosis; I’d make a tray of them every so often, leave them covered in plastic wrap on my kitchen counter, and devour a few every so often simply because they were a valid and incredibly tasty means of delivering chocolatey goodness to my system without eating gluten at the same time.  They’re very easy to make, and still a regular fallback for dessert-making when I can’t get hold of safe oats to make various kinds of cookies (something that happens depressingly often, since I don’t exactly live near a Whole Foods).  I recommend against eating the entire pan yourself, of course, but put these out for company and they’ll vanish in no time.  Unless your company doesn’t like coconut.  That happens sometimes.  Sometimes people don’t like delicious things like coconut.  🙂

Seven-Layer Bars

Yield:  One 13x9x2″ pan‘s worth of bar cookies.

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/4 cup flaked coconut
  • 3 T melted butter
  • 2/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
  • 2/3 cup butterscotch chips
  • 2/3 cup unsalted peanuts
  • 1 14-oz can sweetened condensed milk
  • 1/3 cup sliced almonds
  • 1/2 cup shredded coconut

Directions:

  1. Generously grease a 13x9x2″ pan, and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Cover the bottom of the pan with the flaked coconut.  Make sure the thickness is even and none of the pan is left uncovered; you can use a little more or less flaked coconut as works better for you, but 1 1/4 cups is about the right amount.  Pour the 3 T melted butter over the coconut as evenly as possible.
  3. In order, spread the chocolate chips, the butterscotch chips, the peanuts, the sweetened condensed milk, the sliced almonds, and the shredded coconut over the pan.  It really is just seven layers of goodness, straight up.  🙂
  4. Bake the assembled pan for 20 minutes.  They’ll be very gooey, so let cool for at least an hour before cutting into squares.  Enjoy!

Once more with helpful photographic entities to accompany my words:

Seven-Layer Bars

Yield:  One 13x9x2″ pan‘s worth of bar cookies.

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/4 cup flaked coconut
  • 3 T melted butter
  • 2/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
  • 2/3 cup butterscotch chips
  • 2/3 cup unsalted peanuts
  • 1 14-oz can sweetened condensed milk
  • 1/3 cup sliced almonds
  • 1/2 cup shredded coconut

Directions:

  1. Generously grease a 13x9x2″ pan, and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Cover the bottom of the pan with the flaked coconut.  Make sure the thickness is even and none of the pan is left uncovered; you can use a little more or less flaked coconut as works better for you, but 1 1/4 cups is about the right amount.  Pour the 3 T melted butter over the coconut as evenly as possible.
  3. In order, spread the chocolate chips, the butterscotch chips, the peanuts, the sweetened condensed milk, the sliced almonds, and the shredded coconut over the pan.  It really is just seven layers of goodness, straight up.  🙂
  4. Bake the assembled pan for 20 minutes.  They’ll be very gooey, so let cool for at least an hour before cutting into squares.  Enjoy!