Combine a chewy coconut base with a light and fluffy pineapple topping, and you get tropical heaven in bite-sized pieces. With a whole cup of butter being used in these bars, they are devilishly moist and delicious.

Make some today and let that first bite carry you off to a tropical island. If you close your eyes, you can smell the coco butter suntan lotion, hear the waves lapping on the beach, and feel the sun on your face. Well, OK, maybe not, but your tongue will be in tropical heaven.

 

Ingredients (9” x 9” cake pan – 23cm x 23cm)

Bottom Layer

2 cups flour

1 cup shredded coconut

1 cup natural cane sugar

1 tsp baking soda

½ cup butter, chilled and cut into ½” (12mm) pieces

 

Top Layer

½ cup butter

¾ cup white sugar

2 eggs

¾ cup flour

1 cup crushed pineapple (or 8 rings coarsely chopped in food processor)

 

Make Bottom Layer

1. Preheat oven to 350F (180c).

2. In food processor, combine all bottom layer ingredients and pulse until it resembles coarse meal.

3. Spread the mixture in a buttered and floured 9” x 9” (23cm x 23cm) cake pan. Press the mixture down with a fork.

4. Bake for 12 minutes.

 

Make Top Layer

5. In a large bowl, cream the butter with a wooden spoon.

6. Cream the white sugar into the butter.

7. Using an electric mixer to beat well, add one egg at a time. Beat for ½ minute after each egg.

8. Mix in the flour ¼ cup at a time. Mix well after each addition.

Note: In The Devil’s Kitchen Rules For Beaters apply. If cook did all the work, cook gets to lick both beaters. If there’s a kitchen helper (dipping fingers in the batter for taste tests doesn’t elevate anyone to helper status), cook and helper each get one beater.

9. Add the pineapple and mix into the batter.

10. Pour the mixture over the baked bottom layer.

11. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until a toothpick pushed into the center comes out clean.

12. Sprinkle with a dusting of icing sugar and place on a cooling rack.

13. To produce the perfect two-bite one-hand rectangles of tropical delight, cut the cooled cake into six portions in one direction, and four in the other.

Do these bars keep well? Sorry, the test kitchen has no data, as they keep disappearing too quickly. However, we have noticed that if we secure some and they actually survive to a second day, the bottom layer gets even chewier (worth the agony of resisting temptation).