Bonbon Jovi

It all started with a banana.  A banana very much like this one.  Emily usually gets bananas to eat on her cheerios.  She is very particular though and will only eat them if they are green or perfectly yellow.  I am quite the opposite.  I prefer mine yellow to 50% brown.  Anyhow, the bananas had crossed the line and I could not eat half a dozen bananas in a single day so Emily decided to make banana pudding…you know, the old standby banana pudding that can raise the dead and heal the lame.  

So she pulls out the ingredients and starts to work…vanilla wafers, sugar, vanilla sweetened condensed milk, etc…except the can of sweetened condensed milk was actually evaporated milk.  Rats…first we are trying to do something with the bananas so we don’t waste them, and now we introduce something else we don’t need into the mix.  I couldn’t see wasting the evaporated milk while trying not to waste bananas.

I pulled out my old friend the glorious world wide web (thanks Al Gore!) and searched for a recipe for something sweet and gooey that uses evaporated milk….and I came upon Bonbon Jovis!

Bonbon Jovis

Prep Time: 15 minutes  Cook Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2 cups sugar
• 6 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup evaporated low-fat (2 percent) milk
• 1/2 cup margarine (be sure it’s non-hydrogenated)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups quick-cooking rolled oats
• 1 cup sweetened shredded coconut

Preparation:

In a medium saucepan, combine sugar, cocoa , evaporated milk , and margarine. Cook and stir over medium heat until mixture comes to a boil. Boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly.

Remove from heat. Stir in vanilla . Add rolled oats , and coconut and mix well. Drop by tablespoons onto a cookie sheet lined with waxed paper. Refrigerate until firm, about 30 minutes to 1 hour. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator or at room temperature.

To me, these looked a lot like no-bake cookies (no bake fudgies we call them).  They are pretty close in taste to no bake cookies but are excellent at using up extra evaporated milk if you find yourself in such a predicament.  I give them a thumbs up with an additional half-thumb if you get to lick the pan and spoon!