Cook from the Book: Coconutty Bars

Oh, boy! What a mess! I should read recipes more carefully. I’ll explain what I’m talking about in just a minute. I’m sure this list of ingredients looks like bars that you’ve eaten or even made before. What’s so special about these? These are baked in the microwave. Yep, you don’t even have to turn on the oven. So I was intrigued. I do have a couple of recipes for microwave desserts that I like (5 Minute Brownies and Quick Microwave Banana Chocolate Cake) and wanted to add to my list. And I noticed that this is a quick recipe that doesn’t even require you to use a bowl. You just dump ingredients one at a time into the pan.

I found it in this cookbook titled The Simply Delicious Options Microwave Cookbook. It was a "gift" from one of the first credit cards we had long ago called Prime Option. Believe me, we paid enough interest to them to deserve more than a cookbook, as much as I like cookbooks. The cookbook was from 1996 and it doesn't specify the watts used in the microwave in the test kitchen. So that might have been part of the problem. I don't know enough about microwave baking to have a clue.

I was happily making my bars and timed it. It took me less than ten minutes from start to putting it into the microwave for the 8 -9 minutes. I love those kind of recipes. I did add more than ½ cup of chocolate chips being the chocoholic that I am. It just didn’t look like enough, but it ended up being too much even to me. I followed the rest of the amounts. Then it came to the part of the recipe which says, “Put a plate upside down in the microwave, and set the pan on the plate.” I misread it and put the plate on TOP of the pan.

Uggg! That made a big mess. See???

It bubbled up so much that the coconut and chocolate chips were buried and you couldn't see them. The bars were very sticky and looked absolutely nothing like the photo in the cookbook.

But I wanted to try again and I had all of the ingredients, so as soon as the bars were cool enough, I took them out of the pan to use it. (I have only one 9-inch pan.) I used half chocolate chips and half cinnamon chips. I liked that part. As you can see, it still bubbled up high, but this time, just to the top of the pan and it didn't overflow. I was annoyed that it still wasn't right so I baked it almost 2 more minutes on 100%. Then I topped it with chocolate chips and coconut. I had run out of nuts so I just used toffee bits. They looked a little more like the photo than the first attempt, but not really and they turned out too hard after my additional baking.
So, as crazy as it may seem, the first attempt tasted better since the second one was too hard. But it seems more like very sweet carmely candy than a bar. I'm sorry that I can't say you should try it right away. They are really good tasting, but kinda ugly and not at all like the picture. Elisa only tried the hard, second-attempt bars even though I was hesitant to let her, afraid they'd be bad for her braces. She really liked them except for the fact that it was hard to bite. I will eat what is left of the first batch after I took them to my parents' and some of them got eaten. I'll have to put them in the freezer for a while and take one out every now and then since they have pecans and I'm the only one who would eat it. Or maybe I'll call them candy and send them to work with Robin so I don't eat them all. Do you have a good microwave recipe?

Don't forget to visit Connie (our challenge sponsor) at Tales from the Fridge to see what she cooked up and the other bloggers who participated in the challenge. Would you like to join in on the fun? You can find info at my old POST. We'd love to have more friends involved.