While partaking in my favorite Sunday activity- laying on the couch, drinking coffee, and cursing the amount of cigarettes I smoked the night before-this weekend, I caught an episode of “Best Week Ever” on Vh1. One of the segments pulled together clips from a recent episode of “The Maury Povich Show”. In the segment, it showed a woman who was deathly afraid of chickens. The show, being the bastion of elegance that it is, had a man in a huge chicken suit come out and terrorize this clearly traumatized woman. It was pure trash, but she seemed genuinely upset.
When I was a little girl, my Memere was damn near obsessed with coconut. She served coconut cream pie or coconut layer cake every time we went over for dinner. Her lotions and shampoos were coconut scented, and just in case she hadn’t made her point, her bathroom airfreshner was coconut. One huge problem lies in all of this: I detest coconut. It is truly the work of the devil. I would gladly eat anything-organ meat, rotten food, dirt-before I would eat coconut. The smell of it alone turns my stomach; trips to the beach are hell. It is the only thing I refuse to eat, but the intensity of this hatred is epic.
I feel the pain of the woman who fears chicken. I am that woman.
One of the painful things about this intense hatred is I have seen so many beautiful things defiled by coconut. I have had to sit back while it has ruined a perfectly good carrot cake or a beautifully umbrellaed drink. One dessert I have always admired from a far is the Hello Dolly-always pondering if it could be made without the coconut. Deb at Smitten Kitchen made some a few weeks back and this reawakened the Hello Dolly obsession. I decided to tackle the recipe this weekend and bring the results to a World Series party to see how they turned out. If I am going to fail, I will do it in front of a group of people it seems.
This weekend, I discovered I am a genius. In the place of the coconut, I swapped in some rice krispies. It worked out so well for two reasons. First, the texture of the rice krispies becomes slightly chewy with a touch of crunch, much like coconut, when baked. Second, the cereal does not add much sweetness, which is essential in a recipe that is already so sweet. In the original recipe, the coconut (I assume) acts as a bit of a neutralizer, and the rice krispies do the same thing. These bars are tooth achingly sweet; I ate a few nibbles while prying them out of the pan and it gave me the shakes. They are pure decadence. I suggest cutting them into teeny, tiny pieces in order to avoid a sugar induced coma.
And if you ever make these, please do not tell me if you use coconut.
Hello Dolly
Recipe a combination of many
1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs (I blitzed 7 crackers in the food processor)
1 stick butter, salted
1 cup rice krispies
1 cup pecan chips
1 cup peanut butter chips
1 1/4 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1/2 small can sweetened condensed milk (about 1/2 cup)
Preheat oven to 350. Melt butter and mix with crumbs. Press crumb mixture in to 8×8 pan. Add rice krispies, nuts and chips in layers. Do not mix. Drizzle condensed milk on top. Bake for 25 minutes, cool in fridge and cut.
These were SOOOOOOO good!
And the few remaining ones left after the party? Well, those didn’t last long either. A long day of doing nothing and relaxing on the couch Sunday means that essentially the rest were munched on all day long.
OK, the first thing I thought of was the movie “Dick” with Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams and the scene where they bring “spiked” Hello Dolly cookies to the White House. I never knew they were a real cookie… until I just read your recipe! Those look yummy.
I LOATHE coconut. If vomit had sex with diarrhea and produced a baby, it would be more appealing than coconut.
Starting Today: Why, thank you. I am glad they helped sooth the hangover.
CH: They exist! And are super easy to make.
Arjewtino: I could not have said it better myself.
I am a huge fan of these cookies, and I do like coconut is small doses. This recipe is one of those recipes that I do like coconut in. As I am interested in making these sometime in the near future, I was just wondering; is the amount of coconut the same as the amount you used when you substituted the rice krispies?
MamaBear: Sorry, gonna have to figure that out on your own. I do not enable cocnut consumption.
Well, coconut can go either way for me; I like Mounds bars but I seem to remember this coconut based frosting concoction my mother made that made me shudder in revulsion. There is nothing better than when chocolate and peanut butter come together, which makes me think that the coconut flavor would rain on my parade. I can’t wait to try this recipe!
Thanks for posting!
I despise the coconut too, so thank you for this. There are only 5 foods in the world that I won’t eat, and coconuts are one of them. At the top of the list is olives, however.
http://homeimprovementninja.blogspot.com/2007/02/my-first-memesix-weird-things.html
Michelle: MOUNDS?! You pain me.
HomeImprovementNinja: I just read the list and totally get the whole olive/caper thing. While I enjoy he brininess, it is an acquired taste. But no cucumbers? They are so innocuous.
In terms of salty, sweet, bitter etc., cucumbers are described as having an “astringent” taste…like an oxy pad. Blech!
I know lots of girls like cucumbers on their salads and whatnot, so I assume it’s some kind of Freudian phallic sublimation, or something to do with your monthly lunar cycles.