Coconut-Topped Brown Sugar Bars: An OK Day

As days go, yesterday was pretty ordinary. Nobody died, but nobody won the lottery either (nobody I know, anyway). We did ordinary things – we went to work, went to school, made lots of dishes. We bickered too much and hugged too little. It was an OK day.

And that’s appropriate, because yesterday was National OK Day. March 23, 1839 is the date the word entered the lexicon, and there are folks who still celebrate this milestone today. 

Of course, OK can mean dozens of different things. It can mean “oll korrect,” or signify approval, agreement, resignation, or simply mediocre. The fabled history of the word is much more interesting than the coconut bars we made and ate yesterday, which were also OK -- in the “meh, it’s fine. I probably won’t make them again,” sense.

This recipe, from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking Chez Moi cookbook, leans heavily toward candy. With the coconut and chocolate, I achieved the Mounds Bar quality I’d been searching for. But even though I combined sweetened and raw coconut to cut back on the sugar, I still felt the urge to brush my teeth within seconds of wiping the crumbs from my face. Also, the brown sugar base was too crunchy and sweet, even though I under baked it, as other bloggers had suggested.

I’m happy to see that other TWD BCM bloggers (“Doristas” as we’re now calling ourselves) enjoyed the bars more than I did. Clearly these bloggers didn’t have a problem using the caramelized Rice Krispies topping that originally was called for in this recipe.

Let’s face it, I’m just a cereal snob. I’m OK with that.

New Beginnings with Baking Chez Moi and Ladies Pucks

How fortuitous is it that the beginning of a new bake-along coincided with the beginning of hockey season? And, as fate should have it, we baked these beauties, literally translated to "Ladies Pucks," from Baking Chez Moi.

Many thanks to Dorie Greenspan and the Tuesdays with Dorie group for timing the birth of this book and baking group so perfectly to fit the Yale Bulldogs' home season opener. I'm sure that was at the top of their mind, right?

The only way it could have gotten better is if the cookies had been called Palets de Monsieur, since it was technically a men's hockey game at which my cookies made their debut. But I won't quibble: I'm a lady, I eat dainty, vanilla and lemon frosted white cookie "pucks" in the literal way. These men, they eat pucks in a "take my teeth out with a three-inch vulcanized black rubber disc going 90 miles an hour at my mouth" kind of way. 

But I digress.

These cake-like cookies bear a strong resemblance to the classic black and white, minus the black. My chocolate-lovers balked a little at this ("what's the point of a cookie without chocolate?"), but they settled down once they tasted them.

I've written about our hockey obsessions before, so for now, let me just say this:

The super-simple recipe came together quickly and performed well under the scrutiny of some of the most discriminating fans. Unfortunately, we can't say the same for the Yale bulldogs this year. We could be looking at a long and torturous hockey season. Thank goodness we've got Dorie's incomparable recipes to see us through. 

You can download Dorie's recipe here. Check out the other Tuesdays with Dorie participants take on this recipe here.

Isn't this a beautiful tray? My mother painted that flower!