{TWD} Caramel Crunch Bars

This week's TWD recipe is Caramel Crunch Bars, which are pretty much heaven for toffee lovers. A chocolate-laced butter base is covered with a chocolate layer and toffee bits. This recipe was straightforward and quick - and a gift of grace in that they involved no separated, whipped, or cooked egg parts. And no molten sugar, despite the "caramel" in their name!

n.o.e.'s notes:

- The dough was buttery and not too sweet

- I got lazy in chopping my chocolate and I'm pretty sure the pieces were too big.

- Using the specified 9x13 pan made for a very thin base layer which was a pain to spread on the buttered foil. Whatever merits I might have earned from not over-mixing the dough in the mixer, I erased in pushing the dough all over the pan in an attempt to get an even layer.

- they were very bubbly when I took them out of the oven. I wanted to get a picture of the bubbles but they died down by the time I got the camera ready. I think I could have removed them a few minutes sooner.

- Spreading the chocolate for the topping went smoothly, and I pressed Heath "bits o brickle" into the chocolate.

- I was feeling reckless, so I cut the bars a bit bigger than specified.

- The base layer of my bars was very crumbly. I could not remove bars from the pan, or even pick one up, without parts of the bottom layer spalling off. There was not one bar that ended up nice and crisply cut.

- It seems like using a 9x9 pan might make for thicker, more manageable layers.

the verdict:

very buttery, very toffee-y, very buttery, very crunchy, very buttery, very crumbly, very buttery, very yummy.

And have I mentioned that they're buttery?

I served these at book group and everyone pretty much abandoned all restraint. The bars were a huge hit. I unloaded as many of the extra bars as I could onto other book group members; these are not something that I needed to have around the house! They are absolutely dangerous; I love toffee and these were like a baked elaboration on Heath bars. To me they were more toffee-like than caramel-like.

One thing that bothered me was that they were so crumbly. The large-ish chocolate chunks in the base layer only made the crumbling worse. Operation: Reduce Crumble would include the following steps -
1. Leave the chocolate out of the base layer and either add it to the topping or eliminate it altogether.
2. Try a shorter cooking time.
And
3. Bake them in a smaller pan - 9x9, 11x7, or 8x8 - so that both layers would be thicker.


A note:

I will be observing the season of Lent, which begins tomorrow, in a variety of ways, a few of which relate to this blog. From Ash Wednesday until Easter Sunday (April 12) I will not be eating anything sweet. I've planned ahead as much as possible - by the end of today I will have finished making all five of the March TWD recipes (it's been a baking whirlwind around here in the days since the recipes were announced!) I will be posting each of the TWD selections for the appropriate week, and I plan to bake whichever recipe is chosen for April 7, but I may not actually taste it before I post.

In the past few years I've also made a practice of "giving up" some aspect of computer activity for Lent. This year I'll be giving up Google Reader and also general surfing of other cooking blogs. That's the reason that you'll see fewer of my comments in the coming weeks. My current plan is to try to "speak when spoken to;" if you comment on my blog, I'll visit you and return the favor. Also, if I participate in any roundup events (TFF, BBD, etc.) I will do my best to check the roundup post and perhaps come around and check out individual posts also.

As a final matter, during the first part of March I'll be traveling and will be out of range of computer reception. I'm hoping to schedule some blog posts from my endless backlog of draft posts, so that you'll have something to read in my absence.