Easy One Pan Christmas Bars: MeMaw’s Mystery Bars

Easy One Pan Christmas Bars: MeMaw’s Mystery Bars

mystery-bars

Growing up in my house around the holidays Christmas music was always blaring, my brothers had I were running amok around our 15 foot tall tree, and my mom was always baking & making fun foods to celebrate.   She seriously was the cutesy-crafty-amazing-mom wayyy before Pinterest was a thing.   Now as a mother myself, I still don’t know how my mother did it all!  One of my favorite cookies she makes are called Mystery Bars!  Today on the blog my mom made them with my daughter and we are sharing one of our favorite {and easy} recipes with you!  

I am doing one of the things I HATE when finding a recipe on Pinterest….telling you some long winded story before getting to the recipe.   Feel free to keep scrolling, or check out these photographs of my mom’s recipe book.   Pre-internet when you could save all your favorite recipes organized in Pinterest boards recipe books were all the rage.   This thing is from the 70’s or 80’s and has hand written recipes from my mother and my grandmother, clippings from magazines, printings from the internet, and even has cooking stains on it.   Its a very cherished item in our family-since if you’ve ever been around the O’Rourke’s when food is on the table you know food = life.

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This recipe is so easy you can whip it up quickly for a last minute holiday party or cookie exchange.   It took us no time to make even with a toddler’s help! The bars can be cut as small or as large as your holiday diet can handle.

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Ingredients:

  • 1 stick of unsalted butter or margarine
  • 1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
  • 1 small bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1 small bag of butterscotch chips (or you could use peanut butter chips)
  • 1 cup coconut
  • 1 can condensed sweetened milk

Steps:

Melt butter and pour into a 9×13 inch pan and sprinkle graham crackers on top.

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Press down firmly with a fork into the baking pan.

Layer on the chocolate chips as little or as many as you like!

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Now add the butterscotch chips.

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Next, sprinkle on the coconut!  My toddler LOVED this part! *Note my mother’s “measuring” this is why I must document her recipes-she never really follows them which makes it impossible to copy!

Lastly drizzle the milk on top evenly.

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Place in the oven and bake for 30-35 minutes at 325 degrees.  Once in the oven, do a dance party!!

When the cookies are completely cool cut into bars of any size and viola!  Easy ONE PAN cookies with little clean up!  I hope you enjoy them!

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These are my favorite cookies my mom makes!  I personally like these bars when then are a few days only and not completely fresh so they are somewhat hard.

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What are your favorite family Christmas cookie traditions?  Comment below with your favorite Christmas cookie!

Have a Happy Holiday!

XOXO

Your Redlocks and Shamrocks Girl,

Lisa Doyle

22 thoughts on “Easy One Pan Christmas Bars: MeMaw’s Mystery Bars”

  16. Justine @ Little Dove says:
    Reply

    What fun pictures for this post and recipe! And these sound delicious, thanks for sharing! I also have a big, fat, messy recipe binder with old handwritten and magazine clipped recipes, I love them!

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