Gluten-free Chocolate, Coconut, Cherry and Caramel Cabana Bars

These don't actually look like the delicious Cadbury's Cabana bars from the 1970s, but they taste very much like them, and the beauty of them is that they are totally gluten-free!

I found a recipe by chance in The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit which the most wonderful book to help you find out what flavours go best together.
However, making the coconut layer from desiccated coconut and egg didn't result in the gorgeous chewy sensation that I remembered. So I have adapted another recipe for coconut ice using sweetened condensed milk which is set in the fridge rather than cooked in the oven.
Oh, and I added a few more cherries!

You will need a silicone baking tray with eight chocolate bar shapes. I got mine from ebay.

Coconut base:
100ml sweetened condensed milk (save the rest for the caramel topping)
125g   icing sugar
90g    desiccated coconut
20      glacé cherries quartered
Mix together in a bowl, then divide into eight and press into the rectangular moulds and set in fridge.

Caramel topping:
30g     sugar
30g     butter
2tsp    golden syrup
100ml sweetened condensed milk
Melt gently together in a thick bottomed saucepan, then boil, stirring until a pale caramel colour. Do not over cook, or it will turn into hard toffee! Then spoon over the chilled coconut.

Chocolate finish:
I used 150g of Sainsbury's Fairtrade Belgian Milk chocolate. I melted it on medium power in the microwave for 2 minutes, stirring after a minute, and then spooned it over the caramel. Delicious!

Leave to set. These are best eaten at room temperature so that all the layers are soft and chewy in your mouth. You can tell that I like them very much!
I daren't work out the calories, but I expect that they are quite a lot!
Enjoy!