Caramel Crunch Bars
Caramel Crunch Bars were chosen by Whitney of What’s left on the table? for the February 24th, 2009 edition of Tuesdays with Dorie. A thin caramel flavored cookie base is topped with chocolate and Heath toffee bits. If you want (which of course, I did), you can add a little vanilla ice cream in between two layers and turn these into a delicious ice cream sandwich.
I halved the recipe and used an 8×8 pan. For the toffee bits I just chopped up two Heath bars and removed most of the outside chocolate layer. I had to skip out on the espresso powder but added a bit of strong coffee to the batter instead. For the chocolate I used milk chocolate since that’s what I had on hand. I’m thinking I over baked them just a tad but the taste didn’t suffer at all.
In my opinion, these were the best as ice cream sandwiches straight from the freezer. They were crispy and crunchy which doesn’t go well with the dental work I had done two weeks ago that I’m still in pain from. But I kept coming back to these for taste testing (they are addicting!) all the while wincing from the pain. :)
Thanks to Whitney for a great choice. Head on over to What’s left on the table? to see the recipe. Next week, Lyb of And then I do the dishes has selected Chocolate Armagnac Cake – The Cake That Got Me Fired. Can’t wait for this one!
Caramel-Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake
This past Friday night, I went to the monthly dinner party hosted by one of my friends at work. It’s always a total blast getting together with my co-workers and seeing how we act when outside the confines of our cubicles. I’ve found that a group of friends made up of people you work with have many different personality types and quirks, so there’s hardly ever a dull or unfunny moment. Usually, we have a set activity that is planned for us to do like playing Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Family Feud, or Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader. Sometimes we’ll even watch umpteen Mary Tyler Moore episodes in a row which draws much criticism from all in attendance… which completely surprises the host of the party (and I love every minute of it). This last time a girl brought over her Wii for all of us to try out. I’ve seen it and heard about the Wii but had never played it myself. Turns out I’m quite the Wii All Star Athlete. We played Soccer, Baseball, Bowling, Tennis, Golf, Bull Riding and a few other things. I thought the Wii Fit was interesting, although I’m not sure how great of a workout it would actually be. I entertained the thought of getting the Wii Fit for myself. I mean, with all these desserts like this that I’ve been churning out in the last few months, a girl’s gotta do something. 
Anyway, Tammy of Wee Treats by Tammy chose Dorie’s Caramel-Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie. Sure, I’m a big fan of brownies but I’m not that big of a fan of peanuts (or any kind of nuts) in desserts so I was kind of lukewarm about this one. I was more interested in making my own caramel for this than anything else, which I gloriously burned to black on my first attempt and smoked up the house in the process. Go me! My second attempt I decreased the temperature and kept a close eye on it and everything turned out ok.
I totally forgot to add the heavy cream to the caramel topping mixture. Me? Forget something? No way! So my topping got hard really quick and I didn’t figure it out for a while what the problem was. I was eating (awesome tasting) peanut brittle on top of a semi-dry cake. It tasted good, but probably would have been better had I not scaled the recipe down into a quarter and left out a crucial ingredient from the main component. At any rate, I’m glad I made it. Note to self: cannot watch television anymore while baking as it causes too many problems with burned/missed ingredients.
Thanks go out to Tammy of Wee Treats by Tammy for selecting the Caramel-Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake! Please stop by her blog to check out the recipe and to see what she thought about her choice. For next week, Gretchen of Canela & Comino has chosen Lenox Almond Biscotti. Yee ha!
This post is dedicated to my new nose ring.
