One of the easier recipes in Baked Explorations, it's way less involved than most of them, and quite simple to make. The dry ingredients are combined together with melted butter, and 2/3 of the mixture is pressed in the bottom of a pan to make the crust, while the rest is reserved for the topping. The crusts bakes for 10 minutes, and once it's cool, chocolate chip and pecans are sprinkled on top.
The caramel layer is a mixture of butter and brown sugar, with a touch of cream. Mine was quite liquid and immediately blended in with the chocolate. So there was no distinct caramel layer like I was expecting. The rest of the topping was sprinkled on top of the caramel, and the bars were baked once more until golden brown.
Maybe I didn't bake them enough, but they were quite softer than I had imagined. I have to admit that they didn't get to cool down very much either, as it was quite warm and the house. (And I didn't read the part about chilling the bars for an hour so that they firm up) The chocolate stayed very soft.
It's very, very sweet. My husband said that it reminded him of an apple crisp, and said that the bars would be awesome, slightly warm, under a scoop of vanilla ice cream!
The recipe can be found on the Baked Sunday Mornings blog. Click on though to see how the other bakers enjoyed this one.
I love your husband's suggestion to serve them warm with ice cream! These were sweet and definitely better chilled. Your bars are so pretty, especially the topping.
ReplyDeletei am also back after an almost 3 month break! just too much other stuff going on and amazing seasonal fruit to bake with! i loved how you didn't even need a mixer to make these. something rare from a baked recipe!
ReplyDeleteThese were easy & delicious! Your photo is great. These would be good with ice cream....hmmm...too bad I don't have any left! But there's always next time.
ReplyDeleteI love that the recipes from Baked include simple things that can be thrown together quickly, like these bars (and the chiffon cake recipe for next time is surprisingly simple, too!).
ReplyDeleteMine set up well but I refrigerated them overnight and kept them chilled. Warm with ice cream? Yes, please.
Oh wow! I'll take a scoop of ice cream as well! Your bars look wonderful!
ReplyDeleteMmmmm, now I wish I had tried the bars warm -- a la mode sounds amazing! Beautiful work as always!
ReplyDelete