Recipe: The Lán Kitchen's Comforting Chocolate Cookie Bar

After almost 20 years as a restaurant pastry chef, Arlene Dooley set out on her own with The Lán Kitchen, supplying award-winning creative bakes to some of Galway’s best cafes, including Plámás, Súil Eile and Standún. Here, she shares her recipe for her incredible, mouth-watering cookie bars.

Cookie bars are the best. I love giant, soft on the inside cookies, so this recipe gives more of the softness and less rolling and messing around with regular shaped cookies.

You can slice them up however big or small you want. They freeze perfectly and lend themselves to a world of flavour additions. I keep it simple with a sprinkle of seasalt flakes and sesame seeds. These warmed with a big scoop of ice cream and forget about it. Heaven.

Makes: 12 big bars or 24 squares

Ingredients

530g plain flour
10g baking soda
40g cornflour
230g butter
110g caster sugar
270g light brown sugar
3 eggs
10ml Vanilla
300g Dark chocolate drops
Sprinkle of sea salt

Method

1. Melt the butter (can brown it to give an extra level of flavour).
2. Add to both the sugars and whisk with an electric whisk until light in colour.
3. Mix flour, baking soda, cornflour till all combined and then add to butter mix.
4. Add your chocolate and mix with your hands until it forms a dough and there are no pockets of flour hidden anywhere. Sprinkle on sesame seeds.
5. Press into a lined 12" x 9" baking tray and smoosh into the corners. 
6. Bake for 20 mins at 170ºC and then knock the air out by banging onto a chopping board or counter top. Then back in the oven for another 10 mins or until the sides look crunchy. 
7. Sprinkle the seasalt once out of the oven. Try your best to leave these to cool fully before portioning as they will portion much cleaner (I rarely can though)

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