Re-imagined Magic Cookie Bars

Cookie Bar Background and Ingredients

My husband loves sugar frosted flakes, but refuses to eat the end of a bag. You know that frustrated me at first, as I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away, so I stockpiled them until I came up with a use for them. I had made the recipe inside the label of sweetened condensed milk before and enjoyed them, but never seemed to have any graham crackers to crush (my kids, on the other hand, would actually finish the graham crackers down to the wrapper). A few tweaks to the recipe, including the use of these “old”, usually stale by the time I get to them, frosted flakes emptied my cereal cupboard and just happened to make magical cookies that disappear every time.

Now, I save frosted flakes every time until there are enough to make these reimagined magic cookie bars.

These cookies use frosted flakes, butter, sweetened condensed milk, flaked coconut, semi-sweet chocolate chips, butterscotch chips and chopped pecans. I have never actually measured these ingredients (sorry about that), I just use what I have on hand and it always comes out right. Gotta love recipes like this that are difficult to mess up!

Re-imagined Magic Cookie Bar Recipe

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350°F.


2. Turn the cereal into crumbs.
   Slam my fist on each “old” bag of cereal a few times until they’re crumbs, after placing a twist tie on the end of the bag to keep it sealed. Do this until they’re crumbs, or and use a rolling pin to do the job if you’re stress free. About 1&1/2 cups of crumbs is fine.


3. Place about 4 tablespoons of butter into a 9×13 pan and place it into the oven for a few minutes until the butter melts.



4. Remove the pan from the oven, add the cereal crumbs and mix well.
   Then press the mixture evenly into the bottom of the pan.


5. Gently pour about 1/4 of the can of sweetened condensed milk over the whole thing.
   It’s best to take the entire lid off the milk and not just punch holes in the top. Stir the milk first and then pour slowly to make fine lines across the pan until the top is drizzled with milk.


6. Layer on about 3/4 of a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips and about 1/2 a bag of butterscotch chips (12 oz. bags).
   Alter the amounts to your taste and use any flavor of chips you prefer.


7. Layer about 1/2 a bag of shredded coconut on top of the chips.
   You should be able to still see the tops of the chips sticking out.


8. Layer finely chopped pecans across the top of the coconut.


9. Gently pour the rest of the can of sweetened condensed milk over the whole thing until the entire top is covered in milk.
   Scrape the can to be sure all the goodness goes into the cookies.



10. Bake for 30 minutes.
    The edges will begin to turn golden brown.


11. Run a knife around all 4 sides of the pan immediately after removing the pan from the oven.
    If you try to skip this step, it will be an epic battle to remove the cookies from the pan! Let them cool a little before cutting the rest into squares.

These squares freeze beautifully and, if you have very strong teeth, they’re actually good frozen. Just wrap them in wax paper and throw them in the freezer, no need to worry about a special container.

Re-imagined Magic Cookie Bars

Additional Info

For information concerning repurposing other stale foods, please see our blog post for recycling stale foods.