Chocolate Caramel Bars

Did you have a favorite candy bar when you were a kid? I had a few that I preferred, but the best ever to my mind was a Twix. That’s why I was determined to get these cookie bars right even though it took a couple of tries. This all started when I read the recipe for millionaire’s shortbread in the Baked book, and it sounded straightforward enough. The concept is exactly what you see here which is a layered bar of shortbread, caramel, and chocolate otherwise known as a homemade Twix candy bar. I had a caramel disaster in that the sweetened condensed milk which cooked in a double-boiler (for more than twice the suggested time) never became caramelly or thick enough. Plan B was using store-bought dulce de leche, but that didn’t work either because even chilled it isn’t firm enough. But, then I remembered the chocolate caramel squares recipe I had mentioned from The Golden Book of Baking, and its caramel layer is built in a slightly different way. After comparing the two recipes, I ended up mixing and matching and adding my own touch by keeping the chocolate glaze from Baked and using the caramel from The Golden Book of Baking and sprinkling the chocolate with French sea salt. To clear up all this confusion, I’ll include the final, complete recipe below.

The shortbread cookie base was made first, and the two books differ in that the Baked version is richer with a little more butter and an added egg yolk. For my final version, I went with the more basic shortbread with no egg from Golden Book of Baking. While the shortbread cooled, the caramel was made. In the successful version, butter, sugar, light corn syrup, and sweetened condensed milk were combined in a saucepan over medium heat. It was stirred while the butter melted, then brought to a boil, reduced to a simmer, and stirred while simmering for about 20-25 minutes. The recipe suggests five minutes, but at that point it wasn’t caramel yet. I was not willing to accept failure number two, so I continued cooking until it looked right. From time to time during the 25 or so minutes, I would drop a little caramel onto a white plate to see the color clearly and how it set up at that point. When it looked like the filling in a Twix bar, the caramel was poured over the shortbread and was left to cool. Then, the chocolate glaze was made with melted chocolate, corn syrup, and butter. Once melted together and smooth, that combination was poured over the cooled caramel. Last, I sprinkled sea salt on the chocolate before it set because I’m addicted to doing that with anything involving chocolate and/or caramel.

So, finally, after testing, failing, tinkering, and persevering, I did produce what could be called a homemade Twix bar kind of cookie. The three steps can easily be spaced out over two days, and the steps are simple now that I know what works. I did store the cut bars in an airtight container in the refrigerator to keep them firm, but they are solid enough to remain at room temperature and would travel well. Now that I’m happy with this version of a Twix, I may have to move on to trying Michel Richard’s adaptation of a Kit Kat.

Chocolate Caramel Bars
Adapted from Baked and The Golden Book of Baking

Shortbread base:
2 c (300 g) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (250 g) butter, softened
1/2 cup (100 g) sugar

Caramel layer:
1 c (250 g ) butter, cut into small pieces
1 c (200 g) sugar
4 tablespoons light corn syrup
2 cans (14 oz/400 g) sweetened condensed milk

Chocolate glaze:
8 oz chocolate of your choice (I used milk chocolate with about 40% cacao), chopped if from bars (I used feves)
1 teaspoon light corn syrup
1/2 c (125 g) butter, cut into small pieces
Fleur de sel for sprinkling

Shortbread base:
-Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees F (170 degrees C) and line a 9-inch by 13-inch baking pan with parchment paper.
-Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Beat butter and sugar in a mixer on high speed until light and well-combined. Turn mixer speed to low and slowly add the dry ingredients. Place dough in the prepared pan and press into an even layer. Placing plastic wrap over the top and pressing with a flat-bottomed glass helps to spread and flatten the dough. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until golden. Cool pan completely on a rack.

Caramel layer:
-Place butter, sugar, corn syrup, and sweetened condensed milk in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Allow butter to melt, and stir to combine. Raise heat to medium-high and bring mixture to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low again to maintain a simmer while stirring constantly. For this step, the time could vary a lot depending on the heat of your burner, so watch carefully. The mixture should become an amber, caramel color, and it should thicken a bit. You can drop a small amount onto a white plate to check the color and consistency while it's cooking. With this quantity, mine cooked for about 25 minutes, but if the recipe is halved, less time may be needed. When it reaches the desired color and thickness, pour mixture over shorbread, spread evenly with a heat-proof spatula, and allow to cool completely.

Chocolate glaze:
-In a large, heat-proof bowl, combine chocolate pieces, corn syurp, and butter pieces and place over a saucepan of simmering water. Cook, stirring constantly, until melted and well-combined. Remove from the saucepan and allow the chocolate glaze to cool for 30 seconds. Then, pour the glaze over the cooled caramel and spread evenly with an off-set spatula. Allow the glaze to sit and cool for a few seconds before sprinkling with coarse sea salt.

-Cut into narrow bars and serve with a little nostalgia on the side.

Rum Raisin Shortbread

I have one more cookie to show you before Christmas gets here. This is number three from the cookie swap I started talking about last week, and this is one I had wanted to try for a while. Last year for Christmas, I made a rum raisin pie, and the thought of those flavors in a cookie sounded like a great idea to me. The recipe is found in the Martha Stewart's Cookies book. I've said before that I'll eventually try every recipe in that book, and this gets me one cookie closer. As the name suggests, rum is involved in this recipe. However, there are no raisins as currants are used instead. For added interest, there's some orange zest and unsweetened coconut, and it all combines to make some very tasty cookies.

Although this is an easy recipe, you need to soak the currants in rum overnight before starting. Then, the dough was a simple shortbread to which the drained, rum-soaked currants, unsweetened coconut, orange zest, and some reserved soaking rum and vanilla were added. It was divided in half, and each portion was placed on parchment paper and rolled into a cylinder. At this point, the dough needed to be refrigerated for at least a couple of hours but could have been chilled for a couple of days or frozen for a couple of months. I left it for a few hours and then pre-heated the oven while slicing the cylinders into cookies. There’s something fun about slice and bake dough.

For such a simple cookie, there was a lot going on with its flavors. The rum and coconut were subtly delicious, while the orange zest grabbed more attention. Their small size made it easy to lose count of how many I’d eaten in one sitting, but who’s counting when it comes to cookies at this time of year?

Butterscotch-Glazed Coffee Shortbread

I mentioned a cookie swap and three types of cookies I finally chose to take to the event, and this is the second of the three. This particular recipe is from last December’s Food and Wine issue which included an article about Christmas cookies from baking’s biggest talents. I usually read the December issues too late to actually make use of the recipes for the same year’s festivities, so I file all those great-looking recipes away and wait until the season arrives again. These little shortbread cookies from Flo Braker remained stuck in my head for the last year, and I knew they’d be part of this year’s cookie baking spree. The shortbread itself has finely ground espresso in it, the butterscotch glaze is made with brewed espresso, and the cookies are decorated with a chocolate-covered espresso bean.

The shortbread dough was made with butter, sugar, vanilla, salt, flour, and ground espresso. It was placed in a parchment-lined nine inch by thirteen inch baking pan, covered with plastic wrap, and pressed flat with the bottom of a glass. The plastic was removed, and the shortbread baked for about 50 minutes. The pan was removed from the oven and allowed to cool for about ten minutes before the bars were cut. It’s important to cut the bars before the shortbread finishes cooling to avoid complete crumbliness. Then, the butterscotch glaze was made from butter, brown sugar, brewed espresso, light corn syrup, and a pinch of salt. That mixture boiled for just a couple of minutes to thicken slightly, and then it was spread on the cooled shortbread. The glaze was scored with the tip of a knife along the cuts in the shorbread. Last, but before the glaze cooled, a chocolate-covered espresso bean was added to each cookie.

By baking this in a nine by thirteen pan, it made a thin shortbread which Braker intended for a flaky and light result. However, I couldn’t help wondering about trying this again in a smaller pan for thicker cookies. Not that I’m complaining about the texture of the cookies as they were. They were flaky and lovely, but I was just curious about making them a little studier. Now, there was absolutely nothing I wanted to change about the butterscotch espresso glaze except that next time I’ll double the quantity and pour some over ice cream or pound cake or my breakfast cereal. And, the glaze does set up nicely, and it really did hold the chocolate espresso beans in place. The cookies with the glaze were buttery and sweet, and that sweetness was well-balanced by the espresso flavor. I’m very glad I remembered this recipe from last year, and I’ll be making these cookies for years to come.

Benedict Bars

I’ve been reading the Baker and Spice books Exceptional Cakes and Exceptional Breads, and I may end up making every item found in both books. Everything looks unbelievably good. I linked those titles to Amazon, but the Cakes book is unfortunately, currently unavailable. Baker and Spice shops are located in London and were founded on the principle of hand-made baking with traditional ingredients and methods. They rely on best-quality ingredients and careful baking techniques to achieve incredible goods that are not masked through decoration in any way. I like that approach, and the first item I had to try was the Benedict bar with a crunchy almond topping. My first question was why is this called a Benedict bar? There’s a note in the book explaining that the name comes from the South African Benedict cake which has similar flavors. I didn’t find any information online about this cake, so if anyone can tell me about it, I’m wondering what it’s like.

The recipes in these books are written with metric measurements by weight, and rather than doing conversions I used my kitchen scale set to grams. Now that I have that scale, I don’t know how I lived without it for so long. I did need some help in converting the Celsius oven temperature to Fahrenheit, and for that I used my handy Food Lover's Companion. This simple cookie bar started with a shortbread base. Interestingly, the shortbread ingredients included some corn flour which I luckily had in my bin of random flours. Other than that, it was a straightforward shortbread recipe with butter, flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and vanilla. This was pressed into the bottom of an eight-inch square pan and chilled while the topping was made. The topping was made by melting butter with sugar, vanilla, a little milk, and sliced almonds. The chilled shortbread in the pan was topped with a layer of what was supposed to have been raspberry jam but in this case was black currant jelly, and then the topping was poured over it. This went into the oven for 30 minutes and smelled fantastic as it baked.

I let the pan cool and then placed it in the refrigerator to make it easier to cut into bars. This is a rare time when I think I will enjoy a cookie-type item better in its chilled state. The jelly layer is delicious when cold, and the topping and shortbread can do no wrong at any temperature. I would try to go on and on about the crunchy, nutty top, the fruity, sweet middle, and buttery, rich foundation of it all, but I’m running back to the kitchen to eat another one instead.

UPDATE:
Since the book is not available, and I had a request for the recipe, I'm including it below.

Benedict Bar
First prepare the shortbread crust:
150 g unsalted butter
225 g plain flour (All purpose flour)
4 T corn flour
1/2 t baking powder
125 caster sugar (granulated sugar) + more for sprinkling into pan
1/4 t sea salt
1 t vanilla extract

-spray a 24 x 20cm (I used an eight inch square pan, but slightly larger would also work) with cooking spray and sprinkle with sugar
-dice the butter straight from the refrigerator into a mixing bowl and leave to soften for 30 minutes; sift the flour, cornflour, and baking powder on top, then add the sugar, salt, and vanilla; rub together between your fingertips until the mixtures begins to cohere (Or, place in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix with the paddle attachment until it resembles breadcrumbs.)
-press into the prepared pan and chill in the refrigerator while making the topping

Bars:
100g unsalted butter
60g caster sugar (granulated sugar)
1 t vanilla extract
200g flaked almonds
3 T milk
raspberry jam (or blackcurrant jelly or whatever jam or jelly you have)

-preheat oven to 180 degrees C or 350 degrees F [Here's a handy conversion tool: http://www.metric-conversions.org/temperature/celsius-to-fahrenheit.htm]
- put butter, sugar, vanilla, almonds, and milk in a small saucepan over low heat, and warm until the butter melts; remove from heat and allow to cool
-remove shortbread from refrigerator and spread a layer of jam on top; pour cooled, melted butter mixture over top; bake for 25 to 30 minutes and then allow to cool on a rack; chill in the refrigerator for one hour to make cutting easier