Coconut Chocolate Cookies

Four ingredients and five minutes of mixing. That’s all it takes to get these chocolate coconut bars into the oven. A box of chocolate cake mix provides all the flour, cocoa, sugar, and leavening in one pour. Add eggs, oil, and flaked coconut, stir it together, and spread it into a pan.

The cake mix does triple duty as the flour, sweetener, and chocolate source, which is why this works with so few ingredients. The oil and eggs bind and moisten the dry mix into a thick, brownie-like batter. The coconut adds chewy pockets of sweetness and texture throughout.

Spread the batter into a greased and floured 15×10 inch jelly roll pan. It’s a large, shallow pan, so the bars bake thin and chewy rather than thick and cakey. Fifteen to twenty minutes is all they need. Pull them when the edges are set but the center still looks slightly soft. They firm up as they cool.

Kitchen Tips

• Don’t overbake. These go from chewy to dry in just a couple of extra minutes because they’re so thin
• Grease and flour the pan well, or line with parchment. The coconut makes these stick
• Let the bars cool completely in the pan before cutting. Warm bars crumble and tear
• A plastic knife cuts cleaner through sticky bars than a metal one

Variations

• Toast the coconut in a dry skillet before mixing for a deeper, nuttier flavor
• Add a cup of chocolate chips to the batter for extra chocolate pockets
• Drizzle melted white chocolate over the cooled bars for a bakery-style finish