Madhuram's EgglessCooking.com | Eggless Recipes | Egg Free Baking

Procedure 1 Preheat oven to 350F (325F for glass baking dish).

2 If not using ready to use graham cracker crumbs, place the crackers in a ziploc bag, seal it and use a rolling pin to powder it. Alternatively pulse it a few times in a food processor.

3 Cut the butter into small pieces, place it in a microwave safe bowl and melt it. First time it for 15 seconds, stir it once and keep increasing the time as needed. Mine took 1 minute to melt completely. Let it cool enough to handle with your hands.

4 In a bowl, combine the graham cracker crumbs and butter; mix well.

5 Press crumb mixture firmly on bottom of 13×9 inch baking pan.

6 Pour sweetened condensed milk evenly over the crumb mixture.

7 First add 1/4 cup of the semi sweet chocolate chips evenly over the condensed milk layer. Next add the coconut similarly.

8 Evenly spread the nuts over the coconut layer. Then top it off with the dried cranberries and the remaining 1/4 cup of the chocolate chips.

9 Bake 25 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool completely. I kept it in the freezer for 10 minutes. Cut into bars or diamonds. Store the cookie bars covered.

My Notes 1 Always remember that miniature chocolate chips can be substituted for the regular ones and only half as much as the regular is required if using the mini chips. For instance, the original recipe mentions to use 2 cups of semi sweet chocolate chips, which is way too much sugar and calories. I substituted it with mere 1/2 cup of miniature chocolate chips.

2 Dried cranberries was also not mentioned in the recipe. I added it to balance the sweetness of the bars.

3 I think lining the pan with aluminum foil and then layering it with the crumbs and other toppings will make the clean up and cutting easier, because you just lift the entire bar with foil and cut it outside. I lined it with wax paper, the clean up was easy and I was able to lift it up, but the paper got stuck to the bars a little bit.

4 During the Christmas season (or Diwali) if you plan to bake goodies and give it to friends and relatives preserve the plastic boxes which you get while buying strawberries, baby spinach, blueberries etc. You can use these boxes to gift your homemade cookies etc. Below I have used a box which came with baby spinach. On the cover there was a big sticker of the product. I was wondering what to do and I got this idea. Anyhow I had to write the ingredients used in the bars because of the food allergies prevalent here, so that people in the office can decide whether they can have it or not. So I cut the plain side of a greeting card which I had received, wrote the ingredients in that card and taped it on top of that sticker.