What do chocolate no-bake cookies and road pavement have in common? Both start as a hot liquid mixed with dry materials. Both harden as they cool. The process of making one closely mirrors the other. You heat cocoa and milk and butter and sugar into a liquid binder. You measure oats and walnuts and coconut into a bowl like an engineer measuring rock sizes. Then you stir in the hot chocolate mixture and roll the result flat with a can. As the cookie cools it stiffens, just like asphalt hardens on a road. The finished cookie shows the same layered structure as real pavement. You can see each ingredient through the surface.