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Is it ever a bad thing when food has layers? Lasagna. Layer cake. Parfait. Odds are, if your food resembles strata in the Earth, it's probably delicious.
Case in point: Magic bars, aka Five-Layer or Seven-Layer Bars. These miraculous bar cookies appear in many guises, but always seem to follow three basic steps: Make a delicious crumbly crust. Sprinkle a bunch of delicious things over it. And drizzle in some rich, creamy sweetened condensed milk to tie everything together. The only problem? All that sugary richness can add up to tooth-aching levels of sweetness.
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Enter these Potato Chip–Crusted Magic Bars from Kristin Donnelly's adorable new cookbook, Modern Potluck. Instead of a sweet graham-cracker or pie crust, the base is salty, crunchy crushed potato chips. And all that saltiness balances out the sweetness of the chocolate chips and condensed milk. Instead of sugary shredded coconut, there are unsweetened coconut flakes, which turn deliciously toasty when baked.
And finally, to make these bars truly BBQ-appropriate, smoked almonds are swapped in for the regular kind, adding a whole other, ahem, layer of flavor that makes these treats ideal for any cookout.
