Gluten-Free Ooey Gooey Bars

       To me, this is a classic treat! I was raised in a healthy household... and I mean extremely healthy!  But every once in a while, as a special treat, my mom would buy my sister and I an Ooey Gooey Bar from our local health Food Store.  Fast forward almost twenty years later, and I’m now manager of that health food store, so I decided to share this classic treat with the world.  I hope you enjoy this as much as I have since I was a young boy.

You’ll need…

Crust:

1 cup Schar Gluten-Free Graham Crackers, crumbed

1 cup Schar Gluten-Free Vanilla Cookies, crumbed

1/2 block Kerrygold butter, softened
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Topping:

2 14oz cans sweetened condensed milk

2 cups trail mix

1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

       Preheat oven to 350°F.  Grease a 13x9 pan and set aside.

Using a nut grinder or food processor, grind the graham crackers until they are fine crumbles.  Next, scrape the cream out of the vanilla cookies, then process those into crumbs as well.  Mix with the graham crackers.  Then, mix in the softened butter until you have a nice moist sandy texture that holds together.  Press down into the prepared pan, completely covering the bottom of the pan and going up about a 1/2" on the sides.

 Next, pour both cans of sweetened condensed milk evenly across the cookie crust.  Now, sprinkle the trail mix onto the milk.  (I used a trail mix of raisins, cranberries, pumpkins seeds, cashews, blueberries, and goji berries.)  Finally, sprinkle the chocolate chips uniformly across the top.

       Place the pan into the prepared oven and allow it to bake for 30 minutes.  Once the bars have finished baking, immediately run a knife along the edges of the bars to get the cookie crumbs and any goo off the pan while still warm.  This will make it easier to get the bars out of the pan after they have cooled.

       Place the bars in the fridge for about two hours before cutting and serving!  For an added touch, drizzle a bit of white chocolate across the top of the bars as you serve them.  So delicious!