Chocolate Raspberry Layer Bars

So, this was a pretty fun recipe just because it was so different, but I don't like coconut. =/ Quite unfortunate for me... Anyway, this is basically a graham cracker crust topped with semi-sweet chocolate chips, coconut, and sweetened condensed milk, which is then baked. When it cools you top it off with raspberry jam, walnuts (optional; I made 1/3 without nuts), and drizzles of semi-sweet and white chocolate. It makes for a pretty presentation! My parents went crazy over it.

I'll share some things I learned with this recipe. It calls for 1 and 2/3 cups of graham cracker crumbs but doesn't specify how one might go about crushing up graham crackers efficiently or how many graham crackers to use. Here's the route I took, and it was very effective: place several graham crackers in a gallon Ziploc bag and use a rolling pin to crush them up until it's nice and fine. In a box of graham crackers, I used one of the three packages in the box, plus 3 more graham crackers to get 1 and 2/3 cups.

Oh man, and the recipe called for 2 and 2/3 cup (or a 7-ounce bag) of flaked coconut. We had a 14-ounce bag on hand, and I made the mistake of packing the coconut while measuring it so I used at least 50% too much coconut. >_<

As for the seedless red raspberry jam... All I could find at the store was a 10-ounce jar, and it was called "spreadable fruit" rather than jam. The recipe calls for 1 cup of jam, and when I measured it out the entire jar came out to a little under 1 cup. It worked out fine, but it was a little difficult to spread it over the entire dessert.

Even though I don't like coconut, I'm obligated to try at least a bite of each recipe. There was plenty of chocolate and coconut, and the raspberry jam added a fruity sour-ish bite to it. Really, the way this recipe is put together it reminds me of pie in a bar-cookie form, since it has the graham cracker crust. If I liked coconut, I'm sure I'd like this recipe a lot better. I feel like it would be wrong to count the coconut against the recipe, so I'll say... 3 or 3 1/2 stars out of 5?

This concludes February! In March we'll have 6 more Toll House recipes, two of which involve a little alcohol (whoo~ xD). Haha.

Cheers!

~Jesia <3