Graham Cracker Cream Coconut Confections

Are you one of those kinds of people who buy the jello cheesecake instant mixes and add your own cherry pie topping but use the already made graham cracker crusts that have the neat little turn over and crimp tops and then wonder what to do with the sacks of pulverized graham crackers that come with the box of cheese cake mix? If you are not, then stop reading this. Now. (because that means you probably make your own "from scratch" cheese cakes which take skill, patience, and hours of work and taste heavenly). So go read the news or something; you can read this blog another day when you can relate better.

All right.

I should just have my type of cook reading this blog now. Let's see. Where were we?
Ah yes. The left over little bags of crumbs (which, by the way are terribly hard to shape into a perfectly shaped pie crust the way the back of the box says...hence the already made crusts). I cannot bear to throw those sacks away, so usually they languish in the top drawer of my pantry hoping for an inspiration...sometimes I remember to throw them out after a few months. Today, I ventured upon a new plan: make something with them while they are fresh!

So I made them into cookies. I took two sacks of crumbs, added a half stick of soft butter, a cup of sugar and a 1/2 cup of cream. Then I finished off the vanilla and sprinkled them with cinnamon. To about half the batch, I added the rest of the coconut (from last night's venture into fudgery).
This should give me two kinds of cookies. They are in the oven right now...baking at 375 for I'm not sure how many minutes. I'll keep checking them and let you know how they turn out. Should be interesting.

Ok. This is what I found out so far. Twelve minutes is too long. Try ten. They are golden brown with a great tan on top of that. The good news is...they taste great...at least the coconut ones do. The others are flat and very mushy looking. I haven't had the heart to try them yet. I'm letting them cool and seeing if they harden.

I turned down the oven to 300 and threw in the rest of the dough--coconut included--but this time I didn't form them into balls first--why, when they all run together like that. I plan to cut this one into strips and call it "bars". I set the timer for ten minutes and I'll let you know sometime later how they turn out. Ah, cooking is such an adventure for the fearless.

Update:

The graham cracker crumb coconut bars were great--It took 20 minutes at 300 degrees. The hopeless looking little piles of cookie goo that didn't have coconut in them look the worst...but taste so good I had to hide them from myself. (That wouldn't work if my memory weren't failing). They would be like ambrosia if you ate them while drinking a glass of cold milk.

Next time I'll do the same thing, but cut back on the butter. They seemed too greasy. I'm thinking only 1/4 stick or maybe none at all. The heavy whipping cream probably has enough oil in it. That's my guess.