Chocolate Supreme Cookie Bars

This recipe comes from an Australian chef called Aaron Maree. No - I wouldn't have heard of him either, if I hadn't picked up one of his books, called "Biscuits, Pastries and Cookies of the World", from one of the local charity shops

The ingredients make these cookies seem typically Australian, although if there is anything similar online, it's going by another name. Basically it's a shortbread-type base which is baked, and then covered with a mixture of chocolate chips, desiccated coconut, macadamia nuts and condensed milk. This is then baked again until the milk is lightly caramelised  - when cooled this then sets and holds everything together.

For a 20x 30cm pan, the base was made from 135g flour, 75g butter, 55g icing sugar and an egg yolk, made into a shortbread-type dough. This just about covers the base, with a lot of hard work spreading it to the edges with fingers!  I think half as much dough again would have been an improvement - easier to work with and giving a more substantial base. The dough is then baked at 160C for 15 minutes until set and beginning to colour.

The topping is a whole 400g can of condensed milk, 60g desiccated coconut, 60g chopped macadamia nuts and 200g chopped plain chocolate, or chocolate chips if you would prefer a more uniform looking topping. Half the milk is poured fairly evenly over the cooked shortbread base, then the nuts, coconut and chocolate are scattered over. The rest of the milk is then poured over. After baking for 45 minutes at 145C, the cookie sheet must be left to cool for at least 2 hours before cutting into 24 bars - I had to put it in the fridge for 10 minutes as the whole thing was still quite sticky after 2 hours.

As you can imagine, the topping was very rich and sweet, which is another reason I think a thicker cookie base would be an improvement, as it would give a better balance of sweet topping and plainer base. It was also one occasion when I wouldn't recommend cutting into larger bars - I had a houseful of guests for tea and no-one ate more than one, although everyone thought they were delicious!

I'm entering these into this month's We Should Cocoa challenge. As you probably know, WSC is a challenge originally started by Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog and Chele at Chocolate Teapot. This month the challenge is hosted by BakeNQuilt, and the theme is cookies.