The Right Road

Yep. It's one of my infamous health foods again.

I have really good excuses justification for this one, though! This one has actual fruit in! In a dried, sweetened sort of way. Hear me out.

So, the original recipe looked more like this. Yes, these were originally Rocky Road Bars - I'm not exactly sure what they are now. A road somewhere else, presumeably. I cut out the cocoa powder (upping the flour to make up), added white chocolate instead coughcough, changed and reduced the sugar, added dessicated coconut (which I'm certain is healthy, but can't back up with any factual knowledge or anything. Now I've left school, everyone knows I don't have knowledge anymore), and swapped all the sugar-high toppings for... sugar-high fruit toppings.

So, those are my excuses for eating these. My excuses for making them?

...I don't actually have any. Yeah, it's true; I've run out of excuses to bake. My friends are all busy revising and working and so on, and I mostly sit at home procrastinating, singing the soundtrack to Wicked: The Musical and occasionally recreating a Native American sun dance (something I came across in my US History notes. Wait til I get to Russian History; who knows what that has in store?). When your days are filled with this sort of thing, it's hard to find someone who wants to hang out with you. Can I get an 'aww'?

Anyone? Fine then.

I've been reduced to actually baking for my family, who (sorry) usually don't deserve it. Firstly there was the Daring Baker challe-- only kidding, DBers! Put your hitmen back in their drawer! I'm not going to give that away yet. But needless to say my family are pretty shocked. It's maybe because of this that these bars have been such a hit - they keep eating more to check they're really there.

Me? Er, same.

Tropical Road Bars
Makes 16

115g butter
100g caster sugar
1 large egg
70g plain flour
1/4 tsp salt
120ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp dessicated coconut
100g white chocolate, melted

For topping:
40g dessicated coconut
80g milk chocolate chips (Okay, I didn't have a full bag for some reason)
200g dried apricots
100g dried sweetened pineapple

Preheat oven to 180C. Line an 8-inch square pan.

1. In a medium saucepan, melt butter and white chocolate, then remove from heat and stir in sugar, egg, flour, salt, milk, coconut and vanilla extract until well-blended.Pour mixture into prepared pan and bake for 20 minutes.

2. Remove pan from oven and top with coconut, chocolate chips, apricots and pineapple, pressing them down with a spatula. Return to oven and bake for 5-7 additional minutes (I upped the temperature a bit, to toast the coconut on the top). Cool on a wire rack before slicing with a damp or lightly greased knife into 16 bars. Bars can be stored at room temperature or in the fridge.

3. My toppings kept falling everywhere as I hadn't pressed them down hard enough, so just in case I hadn't hit my sugar quota for the day I made a thin caramel syrup (10g butter, 4 tbsp sugar, a slosh of milk) to pour over the top of the bars while they were still in the pan, to hopefully glue the toppings on. This probably isn't necessary, but I just really like sugar.

Ah, sugar. My true friend. You would never forsake me for Classics revision.