Let me take this moment to express gratitude for the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap. Did we need a remake of the 1961 classic? Probably not, but it’s enjoyable enough, and it introduced little 13 year-old me to one of the great duos—not Lindsay Lohan & Lindsay Lohan—peanut butter & Oreos!
I was already a big fan of peanut butter & chocolate (duh!), but Oreos were a game-changer. I’ve been finding ways to put them together ever since.
Besides the obvious dipping of Oreos directly into peanut butter, I’ve paired the two in homemade peanut butter, cupcakes and blondies, and now Magic Bars!
They have just four ingredients–Oreos, peanut butter, butter & sweetened condensed milk–and come together in less than 45 minutes. Oh, and they’re ridiculously easy and far more delicious than any baked good with four (!) ingredients should be.
We’re talking soft, chewy peanut butter filling and buttery Oreo crust here, people!
Those are two of my very favorite things. One of the great duos, if you will.
Oreo-Peanut Butter Magic Bars
makes 1 8- or 9-inch pan, about 12-16 bars
36 chocolate sandwich cookies (like Oreos), divided
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup creamy-style peanut butter (not natural-style)
Preheat oven to 350F. Heavily grease a 9-inch square pan and line with parchment paper, leaving overhang on two sides. Grease again. Set aside.
Place 24 chocolate sandwich cookies the bowl of a food processor and process until pulverized. Add melted butter. Pulse until combined. Transfer mixture to the prepared pan. Press into an even layer. Bake for five minutes, until set. Set crust aside to cool while you prepare the filling.
In a small mixing bowl, whisk together sweetened condensed milk and peanut butter.
Drizzle sweetened condensed milk mixture over crust. Use a silicone spatula or the back of a spoon to carefully spread into an even layer.
Break or chop remaining 12 chocolate sandwich cookies into pieces and scatter over sweetened condensed milk mixture. Bake for 25 minutes, tenting pan with foil at the 15 minute mark. Bars are done when the center jiggles just slightly when the pan is jostled.
Let bars cool completely in the pan on a rack. Use overhang to remove bars from the pan to a cutting board. Peel off foil. Slice with a lightly-greased knife and serve.
Leftovers will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days, or in the refrigerator for up to a week.
Y’all. Y’ALL. Why did I wait so long to make jam squares?
I mean, they’re so…easy. Seven ingredients, one bowl, no mixer—my favorite sort of recipe.
Five minutes for mixing, five more for assembly. Just shy of thirty for them to bake up.
Once they’re cool, they slice like a dream.
You’ll like the crisp cookie layers, chewy oats, and sweet-tart jam centers on day one, but some magic flavor-melding happens in that first 24 hours and they are eyes-rolling-back-in-your-head good on day two. And they just get better from there.
Easy Raspberry Jam Squares are far more than the sum of their parts. I went into testing thinking these might need cinnamon or nuts, but I was wrong—simplicity is key for optimal jam flavor.
And speaking of jam, I went with raspberry because that’s what I like, but feel free to use any preserves you like. I think blueberry sounds particularly good right now, but that may only be because we just booked our 
Like I said, my favorite sort of recipe.
I must have a thing for sweetened condensed milk right now—this is the third post in a row that requires cracking open a can of the good stuff.
Can you blame me? It’s just so versatile! If you want something to be smooth, creamy, or structurally sound without a million ingredients, sweetened condensed milk is probably the ingredient you want. See exhibits 
Sweetened Condensed Milk is probably most popular as the key ingredient in Magic Bars (aka 7 Layer Bars, aka Hello Dollies). In those, it acts as a soft, chewy filling and a vehicle for various chocolate chips, nuts, and coconut. I don’t currently have a recipe for traditional Magic Bars—rest assured, you can find a million of them online—but I have taken the basic formula and put it on a 
That’s right—Vanilla Malt Magic Bars, y’all! They’re soft and chewy with a big vanilla malt flavor and a buttery cookie crumb crust. The filling is studded with white chocolate chips and broken pieces of Golden Oreo, and the tops are ever so slightly crackly thanks to the way sweetened condensed milk caramelizes in the oven.
These bars require just seven ingredients and come together quickly and easily…again, because sweetened condensed milk makes things a snap.
Oh, and they stay soft and delicious for days on end because…well, you know.
When I moved in with my roommate, I thought it would be a short-term deal. We were friendly, but didn’t know each other particularly well, and I honestly didn’t think we’d get along in close quarters—the original plan was that I’d live here for six months or so while I recovered from the end of a relationship.
Flash forward three years and I’m still here, living with the same guy. Turns out that an obsessive baker who mostly wears pajamas and a neat freak can, in fact, live in peace. And make each other laugh really hard.
Before I get to the point and why this is relevant to Coconut Cluster Brownies, I have to say that this is not some sort of romantic announcement. Hahahahahaha absolutely not.
But let me confuse you further by telling you that he got me a box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t a romantic gesture. We get each other things all the time—I sometimes make 
The small Whitman’s Sampler that I received only had a few pieces in it, and I immediately determined the order in which I would eat them, one at a time, over the next few days. The caramel went first, followed by the buttercream and the ganache. The last one, the candy that I was the least excited about, was the Coconut Cluster. It was shaped like a peanut butter cup, but instead of being a filling enrobed in chocolate, it was a block of milk chocolate speckled with bits of coconut. As I went to eat it so I could toss the heart-shaped box, I didn’t expect much, but then I popped it into my mouth and suddenly became obsessed with putting this rich, simple chocolate-coconut combination on a brownie. And so, a month later, I did.
These Coconut Cluster Brownies are nothing more than my favorite 
If you love chocolate, coconut, and brownies like I do, you will want to hoard all of these for yourself…
…but maybe set one or two or four aside for your friend who puts up with your late night baking and knows you well enough to know how you feel about sale-priced peanut butter and cheap chocolate. That’s a good sort of person to have around.
Texans love a ruby red grapefruit, and while I have not been a resident of my home state for more than a decade, my mid-winter citrus needs are still very real. Unfortunately, the window for finding spectacular grapefruit in NYC is alarmingly short—just a few weeks!—and so I am compelled to take advantage. It’s my duty as a displaced Texan. Or something.
Grapefruit 
These beauts are a seasonal spin on their more traditional 
Now, if you’ve ever cooked with grapefruit, you might have noticed that it tends to lose its natural color and tartness as it is heated. I learned to mitigate this last year while testing Grapefruit 
Here, grapefruit flavor is added in two ways: first, by reducing a cup of fresh grapefruit juice by half, and then by rubbing zest into granulated sugar to release the citrusy oils. I also like to add a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice to ensure that the bars have a tart finish. The idea of omitting the lemon in favor of a “pure” grapefruit flavor is tempting, but I promise that leaving it out will leave you missing the acidic sharpness that makes these bars so singularly great.
The sweet-tart ruby red grapefruit flavor pairs perfectly with the lightly-squidgy texture of the filling—it’s the sort of thing I daydream about sinking my teeth into. Really. I have caught myself thinking about the feeling of taking the first bite into a Grapefruit Bar more than a few times since I finished testing these a couple of weeks ago. Is that not normal?
If not, I don’t want to be normal. Life’s too short not to daydream about the feeling of soft-set grapefruit filling and crisp, buttery shortbread between your teeth. It’s that sort of wholesomeness that makes this whole being a professional homebaker thing worthwhile.
e2 bakes brooklyn 