Coconut Dream Bars

Today was Amanda’s day to bake something. She just turned seven in November and has had plenty of experience having someone tell her step by step what to do, and doing it. Today I wanted her to go a step further and figure it out for herself. I chose a recipe I knew she’d like and printed it out so that the font was not too tiny and she could read it easily. With a little prompting, she did a great job checking the recipe and figuring out each step along the way.

The recipe called for 1 cup of butter. Amanda figured out that if each stick was 1/2 cup, she needed 2 sticks of butter. She unwrapped them both and dropped them into the bowl.

 

She added a cup of packed brown sugar. (The fact that it was a 1/2 cup that we had available gave her the opportunity to do some math again.)

Two cups of flour were next (or 4 half cups)

Manda mixed it all together with a pastry blender…

… until it looked like this.

She greased a 9×13 pan…

 

…and patted the mixture down into it. Into the 350 degree oven it went for 20 minutes.

There was more to be done so she washed out the bowl to be used again.

 

Into the bowl went two more cups of brown sugar.

Manda cracked each of the four eggs the recipe called for into a separate cup. Only a couple of tiny bits of shell had to be fished out. She’s getting so good at that.

Two teaspoons of vanilla (and a discussion about the difference between teaspoons and tablespoons and how they’re written)

1 teaspoon of salt

4 Tablespoons of flour

1 teaspoon of baking powder (Big brother teaches her how to scrape the spoon against the can to level it.)

and 2 cups of coconut.

Amanda mixes it all with a whisk. It was thick. Next time I think we’ll just use a spatula,

which is what we switched to, to spread it in the pan of crust that had just come out of the oven. (Her brother did that part for her as she was afraid she might accidentally bump the hot pan.)

Amanda got to lick the bowl. Being the baker has its privileges.

The recipe says 20-30 more minutes in the oven. It took us 35, perhaps because we always skip the nuts in this recipe? Chocolate chips are sprinkled over the hot bars fresh from the oven and they are left to cool – oh what torture waiting is!

Mmmm! Sweet, chewy, so yummy! Thankyou for making them, Amanda!