Forgive me as I reveal a slice of my cloying (literally) Rockwellian childhood Christmas memories: At my grandmother’s house at Christmas, you were never more than five feet away from a tray of cookies. And that’s cookies, plural. Sugar cookies and cowboy cookies and Russian tea cakes and those little chocolate-covered peanut clusters. My grandma’s house had cookies everywhere during the holidays—little trays of them laid out all over the house, like some delightfully evil Sephora mascara cross-merchandising scheme, enticing you to eat them even if you were just on your way to do laundry. My favorite fixture of the bountiful holiday cookie spread were always the Hello Dolly bars.
A Hello Dolly by any other name would taste as sweet as any dessert that’s doused with an entire can of sweetened condensed milk. And the Hello Dolly does have many other names. The bar cookie, composed of layers of graham cracker, coconut, chocolate, butterscotch, and nuts, appears on many American holiday cookie trays, but you can find the same recipe under the name Seven Layer Bars, Magic Bars, and Coconut Dream Bars these days.
According to a little internet research, the dessert floated around local newspapers and small magazines nebulously before the 1960s, called even more names, such as Graham Chip Squares, Chocolate Graham Squares, Washington Cookies, Chewy Delights, and Seven-Layer Cookies. Then, in 1964, the Broadway Musical Hello! Dolly opened on Broadway. A year later, The Week magazine featured a recipe for a Hello Dolly cake, submitted by 11-year-old Alecia Leigh Couch of Dallas, Texas. (She, like me, learned the recipe from her grandmother.) That same year, the Ada, Oklahoma Evening News also published a recipe for Hello Dolly cookies. Both the cake and the cookies featured that crucial combo of condensed milk, graham crackers, and coconut.
There’s a dinner scene in Hello! Dolly, but as far as I can tell from watching too many YouTube clips of local theater productions, it features no real reference to a dessert of this nature. The bottom line seems relatively simple. The recipe really took off in popularity in the 1960s, a time that coincided with the popularity of the Broadway musical, and thus their names became linked. Hello! Dolly was the longest running musical on Broadway for a while, and the cookie has its own enduring legacy: a place on grandmas’ cookie trays the country over. The recipe, under the name Magic Cookie Bars, has even appeared on the back of the Eagle Brand condensed milk can.
No matter what you call them, the true wonder of this bar lies in its texture. The pressed graham cracker-butter crust and the nuts (which are crucial in my opinion, though some recipes omit them) add crunch. The sweetened flaked coconut and condensed milk add chew and richness. The combination is a textural marvel—or maybe not that, but the exact combination of textures that I want out of a dessert, at least. There’s nuttiness—from the nuts, yes, but also from the caramel flavor of the butterscotch. Semi-sweet chocolate adds depth.
And all of this comes with so little effort. Making Hello Dolly Bars involves not much more than opening bags of delicious stuff and spreading and pressing and sprinkling them into a square cake pan before baking. This also means that unlike most baking, the recipe is endlessly riffable. In fact, no two Hello Dolly recipes ever appear the same, really. Some omit the butterscotch, some omit the nuts. Some call for a specific kind of nut, while others say you can use whatever. (I prefer pecans because they enhance the toffee notes, for what it’s worth.) It’s the quintessential recipe scribbled on a notecard, translated and altered by generations to suit their tastes. The “best” name to call it and the “best” way to make it are inevitably just…whatever your family did.
I have just one suggestion upon tasting these cookies now, for the first time in years. They’re a little too sweet. I found a recipe that uses Ritz crackers, which appeases my broken every-dessert-needs-Maldon palate. I may make these cookies with that slight alteration from here on out. After all, it’s in the nature and history of the whole thing to riff. Then again, as Norman Rockwell proved, there’s an obvious delight in the cloying. And on that note, I’ll give you this: My grandma’s house belongs to someone else now, and the pretty trays that housed so many cookies have gone to some lucky estate-sale scorers, but the nostalgic taste of a too-sweet cookie lives on.
The reason these are called “magic” is because you layer everything into a pan, pour sweetened condensed milk over the top, and bake. When they come out of the oven, the sweetened condensed milk has baked into each layer, creating a bar that holds together and tastes amazing!
Hearing about a curious way that Shaker’s processed medicinal herbs by boiling them in an enclosed vacuum pan, Mr. Borden arranged to spend some time with them to learn about the process. He tried the vacuum method with milk, which resulted in a pleasant tasting product with a creamy milk-like appearance. By boiling the milk in an enclosed vacuum pan, it killed any bacteria that was present and prevented any other bacterial exposure during the cooking process. Bordon also discovered that by adding a substantial amount of sugar, the shelf-life of the milk was greatly extended since bacteria cannot grow in such a sugary mixture.
Advertising was important to the Borden company from the beginning. First, for baby formula, then as soldiers and their families began enjoying sweetened condensed milk in their coffee and tea, the company’s advertising pivoted from filling a nutritional need to becoming the quintessential ingredient in making desserts from ice cream to fruitcake. The printed advertisements exploded from black and white scientific-style ads in newspapers to full-page colored ads in magazines. During the mid-1960s, a recipe for Borden’s Magic Cookie Bars, with sweetened condensed milk as the “magic” ingredient, burst onto the baking scene, and desserts have never been the same.
Gail Borden, a self-taught food scientist, attended The World’s Fair in London in 1851, where he received awards for his invention of a shelf-stable meat-biscuit (think protein bar). Though revolutionary, the dehydrated meat didn’t sell well because of its unpleasant taste. While on his return voyage to New York, Mr. Borden witnessed first-hand the horrors that raw milk could hold. Two dairy cows were brought on board the ship to provide milk for immigrant babies whose families had booked passage to America. During the journey, the cattle became sick with an infectious disease and died. In turn, the children fell ill and lay dying in their mother’s arms. Mr. Borden was moved with compassion.
While researching this article, I was interested to learn how the recipe for Magic Cookie Bars has changed over the years. In a magazine ad from the 1970s (below), the recipe calls for one cup (6 oz) semi-sweet chocolate or butterscotch morsels, a 3 oz can or 1-1/3 cup flaked coconut, and a 15 oz can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk. The directions say to melt the butter or margarine in a saucepan before pouring it into the baking dish to be mixed with the graham cracker crumbs. The order given for layering the remaining ingredients is illustrated in the ad with sweetened condensed milk poured over the top.
Upon his return, Borden immersed himself in the development of a sanitary shelf-stable baby formula. With no knowledge of germs or bacteria, Borden knew something needed to be done to stop the “incipient decomposition of milk.” First, he boiled cow’s milk in a pot to reduce the amount of liquid to make it more transportable. Then he added sugar. Unfortunately, the result of boiling milk in an open vessel was a burned, bad-tasting mass. Having learned the hard way with his meat-biscuit, Bordon knew that taste and appearance would be key to the success of his product. He went back to the drawing board.
There’s a dinner scene in Hello! Dolly, but as far as I can tell from watching too many YouTube clips of local theater productions, it features no real reference to a dessert of this nature. The bottom line seems relatively simple. The recipe really took off in popularity in the 1960s, a time that coincided with the popularity of the Broadway musical, and thus their names became linked. Hello! Dolly was the longest running musical on Broadway for a while, and the cookie has its own enduring legacy: a place on grandmas’ cookie trays the country over. The recipe, under the name Magic Cookie Bars, has even appeared on the back of the Eagle Brand condensed milk can.
No matter what you call them, the true wonder of this bar lies in its texture. The pressed graham cracker-butter crust and the nuts (which are crucial in my opinion, though some recipes omit them) add crunch. The sweetened flaked coconut and condensed milk add chew and richness. The combination is a textural marvel—or maybe not that, but the exact combination of textures that I want out of a dessert, at least. There’s nuttiness—from the nuts, yes, but also from the caramel flavor of the butterscotch. Semi-sweet chocolate adds depth.
And all of this comes with so little effort. Making Hello Dolly Bars involves not much more than opening bags of delicious stuff and spreading and pressing and sprinkling them into a square cake pan before baking. This also means that unlike most baking, the recipe is endlessly riffable. In fact, no two Hello Dolly recipes ever appear the same, really. Some omit the butterscotch, some omit the nuts. Some call for a specific kind of nut, while others say you can use whatever. (I prefer pecans because they enhance the toffee notes, for what it’s worth.) It’s the quintessential recipe scribbled on a notecard, translated and altered by generations to suit their tastes. The “best” name to call it and the “best” way to make it are inevitably just…whatever your family did.
I have just one suggestion upon tasting these cookies now, for the first time in years. They’re a little too sweet. I found a recipe that uses Ritz crackers, which appeases my broken every-dessert-needs-Maldon palate. I may make these cookies with that slight alteration from here on out. After all, it’s in the nature and history of the whole thing to riff. Then again, as Norman Rockwell proved, there’s an obvious delight in the cloying. And on that note, I’ll give you this: My grandma’s house belongs to someone else now, and the pretty trays that housed so many cookies have gone to some lucky estate-sale scorers, but the nostalgic taste of a too-sweet cookie lives on.
A Hello Dolly by any other name would taste as sweet as any dessert that’s doused with an entire can of sweetened condensed milk. And the Hello Dolly does have many other names. The bar cookie, composed of layers of graham cracker, coconut, chocolate, butterscotch, and nuts, appears on many American holiday cookie trays, but you can find the same recipe under the name Seven Layer Bars, Magic Bars, and Coconut Dream Bars these days.
Magic Cookie Bars
FAQ
Why is it called a magic bar?
Why is it called a bar cookie?
Why are they called Hello Dolly bars?
Is a cookie bar a cookie?
How did magic cookie bars get their name?
The exact origin of the bars and how they got their name remains lost to history, but there are some clues. Borden, the makers of Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk, shared a recipe for magic cookie bars on their can labels and in women’s magazines in the 1960s.
How do you make magic cookie bars?
Magic cookie bars are a nostalgic treat that remain popular today. Graham crackers: Crush graham crackers until finely ground or opt for store-bought graham cracker crumbs. Unsalted butter: Melted unsalted butter binds the graham cracker crumbs into a cookie crust.
What are magic cookie bars?
Magic cookie bars have many names, but you probably know them when you see them. This dessert bar is ooey-gooey and has seemingly endless layers of delicious treats all packed inside. When all of the ingredients for these bars are combined, you end up with a deliciously sweet, perfectly balanced bite.
Why are magic bars called magic bars?
As for “Magic Bar,” the name likely stems from Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk, who published a recipe for these dessert cookie bars on the back of their condensed milk cans in 1964. Maybe it got its name from how magically easy they are to make!