Magic Cookie Bars: a Classic Mid-Century Recipe

If you've never eaten a Magic Cookie Bar then stop what you are doing and make these now--life is too short to miss out on this scrumptious treat!  I've been baking a lot recently and I suddenly had a craving for these. My mother often made these for potlucks or other get-togethers when I was a kid and I hadn't had one in years. As you can see from the photo, I didn't let these cool down quite enough before I cut them. Melted chocolate everywhere...because I just couldn't wait!

Sadly, many people have never heard of or tasted this scrumptious mid-century classic, and that is what prompted this post today. As far as I know, the recipe premiered in The Dessert Lovers' Hand-Book, a booklet of recipes produced by Borden in 1969 to feature Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk. I inherited my copy from my mother, and you can see how well-loved it has been in the photo below.

The bars are very easy to make! I'm sharing the original recipe along with my tips to make sure yours turn out just right.

Magic Cookie Bars 
(Makes about 2 dozen 1 1/2 inch x 3 inch bars)

Ingredients:

1 stick (1/2 cup) of butter
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs*
1 cup chopped nuts (I use walnuts)
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips**
1 1/3 cups flaked coconut (shredded is also okay)
1 can sweetened condensed milk

*Make your own crumbs by placing about nine full size graham cracker sheets in a Ziploc bag, and then crush them with a rolling pin.

**I use a full 12 oz. bag of chocolate chips because I am a chocoholic.

Preheat over to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Rub the sides a 13 x 9 x 2 inch pan with a little of the butter, and then put the rest of the stick in the bottom of the pan. Put it in the oven until the butter melts. Remove from the oven and sprinkle the graham cracker crumbs evenly over the bottom. Mix so that all of the crumbs are coated evenly with the butter. Lightly press the crumbs down at the bottom of the pan as though you were forming a graham cracker crust.

Sprinkle the nuts evenly over the crumbs. Scatter the chocolate chips over the nuts, and sprinkle the coconut evenly over the chocolate chips.

Pour the sweetened condensed milk evenly over the coconut. It's very thick, so use a rubber spatula to remove all of the milk from the can and drizzle it over the coconut. It's important to cover as much of the coconut as possible so it won't burn during baking.

Now wait for about five minutes to allow the condensed milk to soak through all of the layers. Then put the pan in the oven and bake for 25 minutes or until the top is golden brown. Remove from the oven and immediately run a knife around the edges of the bars. Allow to cool completely in the pan before cutting into bars.

And there you have it! One of the best cookie bars you will ever taste. Enjoy!

Halloween Goodies, 1940s Style

At this time of year I like to search through my vintage cookbooks and magazines for long-lost recipes, craft, and decorative holiday ideas. Sometimes I enjoy reproducing the recipes or crafts, and sometimes it is just interesting to look at these things through the lens of history.

I found two charming ads in my October 1941 issue of Woman's Day to share with you.  At this point World War II had begun, but the U.S. would not officially enter until December of the same year.  Rationing did not begin until Spring 1942, so sugar, meat, and fat were still readily available in the fall of 1941.

This first ad is for the A & P grocery chain, and features a macaroni recipe that uses evaporated milk but still contains two types of meat, the choice of chicken or veal and ham.   I think it would be very interesting to see how an ad for the same macaroni might change six months later.

I still haven't found a gingerbread recipe that I really like, so I just might try the one written for the Good Little Goblins in this ad:

Halloween Gingerbread

1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup molasses
2 1/2 cups sifted flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 TBS. ginger
1 tsp. cinammon
1 1/2 tsps. baking soda
1 cup evaporated milk soured with 1 TBS. vinegar

Cream shortening and sugar; beat in eggs one at a time; add molasses.  Sift flour with spieces, baking soda, and slat.  Add to molasses mixture alternately with soured evaporated milk.  Pour into greased shallow baking pan and bake 30 minutes in a moderate oven, 350 degrees F.  Cool and top with Orange Icing.  8 servings. (The Orange Icing recipe is not included here.  Perhaps it was on the evaporated milk can?)

I found this second A & P ad for Jane Parker donuts to be just too cute. I love those individual leaf-shaped serving trays and I wish that they were mine.  If I saw those at a thrift store or estate sale I'd snap them up.   But I have to say that those ghostly little marshmallow faces with cloves for eyes and maraschino cherry mouths just adorable?

What are you planning for Halloween?  Do you have a recipe or a decorating tip to share?  Leave a comment!

Dishes Men Like: a Mid-Century Cookbook

A friend gave me a small stack of retro and vintage cookbooks this summer because she knows that I collect them.  I set them on my cookbook shelf and forgot about them until this week when I took a look at the pamphlet-style Dishes Men Like, a cookbook published by Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce in 1952: 

Each of the 168 recipes uses Worchestershire sauce, and Lea & Perrins swears that the sauce is the "favorite of men in all parts of the country."  The subtitle on this book reads "new recipes and old favorites...easy to prepare...sure to please."  And with instructions like this:

this cookbook should have been a hit with men, right?

So I laughed out loud when I saw page after page after page of this:

Most of the recipes must have been terrible because the former owner has crossed most of them out!  Were these recipes not man-pleasing enough?  The only recipe on the page above that didn't get the axe was the recipe for Deviled Crackers, which are saltine crackers spread with butter (and Worchestershire sauce!) and baked in an oven.  Wow.

Some of the recipes sound less-than-appetizing though, so I don't blame the former owner for crossing them out.  Speedy Green Noodles De Luxe.  Jellied Chicken Loaf.  Tuna Fondue anyone?

As I do the majority of the cooking in our household I just may whip up a Succulent Meat Pie or something and test it out on my husband.  I actually already have a bottle of Lea & Perrins in the fridge so I'm already prepared!

Dear readers, is there a recipe that you love to make for your family that is always a big hit?  Share it with us!

Vintage Recipe: Chicken Caruso

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was looking through my cookbooks looking for new recipe inspiration, and I found it in Betty Crocker's New Dinner for Two Cookbook:

I turn to the Betty Crocker cookbooks for straightforward, basic American recipes that tend to turn out well every time, though I usually need to embellish with a few more spices because I like my food well-seasoned. 

I decided to try out the Chicken Caruso recipe as-is because I figured that the combination of ingredients would be pretty flavorful, perhaps even worthy of an aria as the dish is named after legendary tenor Enrico Caruso.  And how can you go wrong with a dish that includes both bacon and cheese? Here's the scanned page from the book (it includes a few other recipes too):

The only change I made was that I used egg noodles instead of macaroni because that is what I had in my pantry.

Here's the final result:

Unfortunately, this dish turned out to be just so-so.  I really wanted this to be good (I love bacon!  I love cheese!) but I found the ingredients to be too tame or too greasy.  First of all, it was a pea-fest -- the one cup of peas really dominated the flavor of the dish, and even though I like peas a cup was way too many.

This dish could benefit from the addition of more spices; I think a pinch of red pepper flakes when sauteing the onion and green pepper would really boost the flavor.

I'm also not surprised that Americans have such a high rate of heart disease given dishes like this one -- bacon grease and the fat from cheddar cheese made this a fat bomb -- you can see from the photo how slick the noodles are.  And both the cheese and the bacon really weren't that noticeable because of the peas!

Still, I'm not ready to give up on this cookbook yet.  Dear readers, if any of you have made successful recipes from this book I'd like to hear about it!

Christmas Eve Edition of Vintage Thingies Thursday: Spritz Cookies

For this special Christmas Eve edition of Vintage Thingies Thursday, I bring you this fabulous 1950s era Mirro Cooky and Pastry Press.  This set belongs to a friend, and she brought it to my house Sunday evening so I could help her do some massive Spritz cookie baking to give as gifts for her coworkers.  The forming disks are so cute.  Among the fifteen disks, my three favorites are the Christmas tree, the dog, and the camel.

I wish I had some actual cookie shots of my own for you, but unfortunately, we *ahem* overcooked the original batch and had to start all over.  By the time we were all done it was two in the morning, and I just wasn't coherent enough to take pictures at that time.

One of my Christmas Eve traditions is to make cookies (for Santa of course!).  I am a big, big fan of butter cookies, so most of my Christmas baking centers around one or two of the myriad variations of butter cookie recipes in the world.   If you have (or can borrow) a cookie press, here is a vintage recipe for Spritz cookies that you may enjoy.  The most important ingredient in a butter cookie is the butter! Make sure you like the taste of the butter that you use before you use it for baking, as taste varies considerably from brand to brand. So as always, use a high quality and preferably organic butter for the best results.  It never hurts to use organic eggs, sugar, and flour too. 

Basic Spritz Cookies

1 cup unsalted organic butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

multicolored sprinkles or colored sugar, for decorating

Cream butter, gradually add sugar and continue beating until light and fluffy.  Combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl.  Add egg yolk, vanilla, and dry ingredients to the butter and sugar mixture. Mix to a smooth dough. If the dough seems too sticky to use in the cookie press chill it first. Force through the cookie press onto an ungreased cookie sheet.  A cold cookie sheet will help keep the cookie on the sheet  when you lift the press.  Sprinkle with colored sugar, taking care not to get the sugar on the pan as it will burn (or use parchment to cover the cookie sheet). Bake at 400 degrees for 5 to 7 minutes until firm, but not browned on top.   This recipe makes about four dozen cookies.

I like this version because they are not overly sweet, and are good with tea or coffee.  If you'd like a sweeter cookie you should be able to to increase the sugar to 2/3 cup without a problem.  These cookies are darling with multicolored sprinkles or colored sugar, and if you use the disk in the very last picture above, you can set a tasty Hershey's kiss in the middle.  The cookies pictured above are from the Forever Swedish website, as Spritsar are a traditional Swedish Christmas cookie.  You may want to try the recipe on that website, as it is sure to be authentic.  I'm sure that Santa will like them!

Second Mirro box image courtesy of Poetic Home.