Dulce de Leche Coconut Chocolate Chip Bars

Alejandro's sixth death anniversary. February 10. The candle. The prayer. The caldo. The ritual that is now six years old and as permanent as the kitchen floor it is performed on. Alejandro's candle at St. Patrick's burns next to Rosa's, and the two flames lean toward each other the way they always lean, and I choose to believe the leaning is them, reaching for each other across the divide, because choosing to believe is the only form of certainty that grief allows.

The wedding is ten weeks away. Andrea's binders (three now) are complete. The dress is hanging in Andrea's closet. The guest list is finalized: one hundred and twenty people, which is more than the bakery can hold, which means the reception will spill into the parking lot, which means Diego's folding tables will be deployed at full capacity, and the parking lot will be transformed into a dining room, and the dining room will be under the El Paso sky, and the sky is the ceiling of the best reception hall in the city.

I made Valentine's Day food for the bakery — heart conchas (year eight, the tradition Sofia started when she was twelve), sweet tamales de dulce, Care Packages (fifty-five this year, at thirty-five dollars), churros con cajeta. The Valentine's revenue: thirty-eight hundred in one week, a new record. The bakery is performing at a level that would have been unimaginable nine years ago, and the unimaginable is now the monthly spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet is Sofia's love language, and the love language speaks in dollars and percentages and the particular poetry of a profit margin that exceeds thirty percent.

I made flan for Alejandro's anniversary — the memorial flan, the dark caramel, the three milks. The flan sat on the counter next to a photograph of Alejandro that Carmen brought — a photograph I hadn't seen, from the 1980s, Alejandro young and strong, holding a cinder block, building the house in Anapra. The photograph and the flan, side by side: the builder and the dessert, the man who made something with his hands and the custard that his daughter makes with hers. Two forms of construction. Two forms of love. Both permanent. Both beautiful. Both requiring the particular patience of a person who understands that the thing they are building will outlast them.

The dark caramel I make for Alejandro’s flan every February is the same caramel that lives underneath everything else I bake — the patience of it, the willingness to let sugar go past golden and into something deeper and more complicated. These Dulce de Leche Coconut Chocolate Chip Bars came out of that same instinct: the cajeta on the churros, the flan on the counter, the sweetness that is really just grief given a form you can share with other people. I made a batch for the bakery the same week, tucked between the heart conchas and the Care Packages, and they went fast, the way things go fast when they are made with the right kind of attention.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 30 minutes | Total Time: 45 minutes | Servings: 24 bars

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups sweetened shredded coconut
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 can (13.4 oz) dulce de leche
1/2 teaspoon flaky sea salt, for finishing

Instructions

Preheat and prepare. Heat your oven to 350°F. Line a 9x13-inch baking pan with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on the sides for easy lifting. Lightly grease the parchment.
Whisk the dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
Cream the butter and sugars. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter with the granulated sugar and brown sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in the vanilla extract.
Combine the dough. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until just combined. Fold in the shredded coconut and chocolate chips until evenly distributed throughout the dough.
Build the layers. Press slightly more than half the dough evenly into the prepared pan to form the base layer. Warm the dulce de leche in a small saucepan over low heat or in the microwave for 30 seconds, stirring until pourable. Spread the dulce de leche evenly over the base layer, leaving a 1/4-inch border around the edges.
Add the top layer. Drop the remaining dough in rough spoonfuls over the dulce de leche layer. Gently press and spread the dough to cover as much of the caramel as possible — a few gaps are fine and will allow the dulce de leche to bubble up and caramelize at the edges.
Bake. Bake for 28—32 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the center is just set. A few darker caramel bubbles around the edges are a good sign. Do not overbake; the bars will firm up as they cool.
Finish and cool. Remove from the oven and immediately sprinkle with the flaky sea salt. Let the bars cool completely in the pan on a wire rack, at least 1 hour, before lifting out with the parchment and slicing into 24 bars.

Nutrition (per serving)

Dulce de Leche Coconut Chocolate Chip Bars — The Caramel That Carries Both of Us