Coconut Dream Bar
Many claim they have the best recipe for the Coconut Dream Bar. However, we think that a dessert with so many recipe variations has several good competitors—including ours. While most iterations of this nutty sweet treat have a plain shortbread crust and a gooey filling made with sweetened condensed milk, we take a more refined route. Rather than a traditional shortbread, we make a flavorful shortbread out of browned butter and finely chopped pecans. The browned butter adds a caramelized depth of flavor to the base along with the richness of the roasted pecan pieces packed into the crust. Instead of sweetened condensed milk, our filling is made out of dark brown sugar, eggs, and sweetened shredded coconut. But to top it all off, we sprinkle unsweetened coconut flakes onto the filling so that the coconut pieces toast on the surface as they bake into the sweet filling underneath.
