Speculoos Butterscotch 7-Layer Bars

Written by Published on in bar cookies, cookies, dessert, NYE, pantry baking, recipes, squares

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups speculoos cookie crumbs*
1/2 cup butter
10 oz semi or bittersweet chocolate chips
1 cup butterscotch chips
1 cup unsweetened finely flaked coconut
1/2 cup roughly chopped toasted pecans
1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9×13 inch baking pan. Set aside.

Melt butter in a small pan. Remove from heat and stir in cookie crumbs until thoroughly combined. Press, using the back of a spoon or the bottom of a measuring cup into the bottom of the buttered pan taking care to reach all corners.

Evenly sprinkle the chocolate chips, then the butterscotch chips,  coconut, and peanut over the cookie layer. Pour the sweetened condensed milk evenly over the top, and spread with the back of a spoon or spatula until the mixture is evenly coated.

Bake for 25-30 minutes until edges are golden brown.

Allow to cool on a wire rack completely before slicing. TYou can refrigerate them before slicing if you are a clean lines fanatic. Store in the refrigerator or on a cool counter in an air-tight container. Freeze leftovers up to 6 months if desired.

*You can also use pre-packaged cookies. Lotus brand speculoos (Biscoff cookies in the US) are readily available. You’ll need one 8.8 oz container (minus a cookie or two for snacking and quality control purposes) to make 1 3/4 cups crumbs.

My thoughts:
Every year my husband and I do a themed NYE movie marathon with paired food and games. For a long time, we did decades then switched to other themes when we ran out of them. We’ve done everything from Hawaii to Westerns to Trains. This year we did movies with numbers in the title, played games involving numbers like Dos and this classic edition Yahtzee and made food with numbers in the name.
I made a version of 7-layer bars over the summer I called cocoanuts bars  that we really enjoyed so it was obvious I needed to make a new version for New Year’s Eve!  I had used speculoos in another recipe so I had them on hand and used that as a base to work out off. I thought the warm flavors of butterscotch and pecans would pair nicely with the spice cookie. It really did! These cookie bars were definitely sweet but had a cozy, warm feeling to them.Once again, I used unsweetened coconut because the other ingredients are so very sweet. I found it in the “natural” food aisle if you have trouble locating it, not the baking aisle. It is pretty fine and the result is that the bars have a definite more candy bar feel vs the slightly cookie-macaroon of more coarsely grated coconut. I liked it a lot but there is a tiny texture difference. You can use unsweetened flaked coconut for a more traditional 7-Layer/Dolly Bar texture.

 

Comments are closed.