Not to be one of those people who freaks out and makes a huge deal when they’re sick and feels the need to tell EVERYBODY about their miserable existence…but oh my gosh, I had a really, really, miserable existence this past week. I was more sick than I can remember being in years. While I was trapped in my bed for days on end I had a stack of food magazines on my night stand, and every time I’d pick one up, I’d put it back down just as fast. Food itself bothered me. And it wasn’t that it was making me feel sick, I was just completely disinterested. My husband cooked an amazing Easter dinner and I couldn’t care less about not eating it. My house was full of Cadbury Eggs and Reeses PB cups and I didn’t even sample one. And the crowning jewel of my apparent stint with insanity? 6 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies showed up and I ate one. ONE. (That’s when I told my husband I thought it was time for a CT scan or something) I subsisted on toast and popsicles for several days and then it hit me. Do people live like this all the time? Are there people who don’t wake up and have the first thing that goes through their head be what they’re going to eat that day? Are there people in the world that really don’t care if there are Cadbury Eggs on the counter or Girl Scout Cookies in the pantry? Or who don’t have recipes rolling around in their brains on a never-ending loop? I’ve heard they exist, but after my week here’s one thing I now know for sure: I’m not one of those people. Boy am I glad to have my foodie-brain back again; I missed it. To celebrate, we’re making these:
These classic bars take soft cookie dough and sandwich it together over chocolate and caramel. You really can’t go wrong there.
We start off with normal ingredients for a soft, sweet cookie.
Mix up an easy batter
and throw some oats in there. (PS: raise your hand if you want to stick your finger in that.)
You’ll need to divide the dough at this point. Sometimes when a recipe tells you to remove half, or a third of a mixture it can be a little tricky, so here’s a little tip. Press your dough into an even layer and then score it with your spatula. That will ensure you’re taking out as much as you’re supposed to.
In this case, it’s 2/3 of the mixture, and we’re going to press it into the bottom of a foil-lined pan. One thing I love about this recipe is that it’s written for a 15 x 10 inch pan. I got a pan that size for a gift a few years back and at first I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it, since I usually need 9×13″ pans. But this pan has become one of the most-used dishes in my kitchen. You can see in the photo below that it’s just a little bit bigger than a 9×13″. I often use it when I know I need to stretch a recipe just a little bit to feed more people, but I don’t want to double it. You can buy sheet pans in 15×10 as well, and that works great for this recipe, too. If you don’t have a 15×10, just use something close. You could probably put all of this in a 9×13 as well, but they’ll be pretty thick, and you might have to bake them a bit longer. If someone tries it, make sure to let us know in the comments how they turn out!
Drop chunks of dough on the bottom of the pan and then press it into an even layer.
Next, sprinkle on a layer of chocolate chips. I like mini chips because they distribute better, so if I just have regular chips I give them a quick, rough chop.
And also a few chopped pecans or walnuts. You can leave the nuts off if you want to (or need to) but I do really love the texture and flavor they add, and I like to toast mine first. I did half and half in my photo below- that works too!
Now, let me introduce you to another one of my favorite things:
A lot of recipes for caramelitas call for jarred caramel sauce and in this one we’re using real caramel. I used to almost avoid recipes that called for caramel because I’m not a huge fan of the little Kraft caramels and it seemed like good ones were hard to find and I certainly wasn’t about to make caramel to then go and use in another recipe. Then I discovered Peter’s Caramel. It comes in 5lb blocks. That’s 5 pounds of buttery deliciousness at your fingertips. You may be asking yourself what you’d possibly do with 5 pounds of caramel, but that’s the great thing. You just wrap it up and store it in your pantry and cut off pieces when you need it. And if you have 5 pounds of caramel in your pantry you will suddenly think of all sorts of things to do with it. It stores great and lasts a long time and it’s perfect for cooking and baking. Peter and I are so close we sometimes have quiet moments together in the pantry when no one is looking.
Those of you in the SLC area, you can run into Orson Gygi’s and grab a loaf of Peter’s caramel, and those of you not in SLC, you can order it online. It’s really high quality caramel and you can melt it with different amounts of evaporated milk to make it thinner or thicker for all kinds of uses. I highly recommend it.
for this recipe I cut up about 9 ounces and melted it with just a few tablespoons of regular milk until it was creamy and smooth.
And that pours right on top of our chocolate and nuts.
Then we take the remaining reserved dough and sprinkle it on top and pop the pan in the oven for about 20 minutes.
The two cookie layers bake up soft, sandwiching the caramel and chocolate in the middle. On the top, little bubbles of caramel peek through the cookie cracks.
After they’re cooled, you can just lift up the foil to remove the whole sheet of bars and cut them into squares. Make sure to let them cool first; that’s the hard part!
Sweet, gooey, caramely, chocolaty, squares.
Caramel-Chocolate Oatmeal Bars {Caramelitas!}
Minimally adapted from BHG 15th Edition
1 cup butter, softened
2 cups packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3 cups quick-cooking rolled oats
1 cup mini semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (I like to toast them first)
30 caramels (9 ounces), unwrapped
3 tablespoons milk
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 15×10 inch baking pan with foil, leaving about 1 inch extending over the edges of the pan. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl beat butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add brown sugar. Beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Add eggs, vanilla, baking soda and salt; beat until combined. Add flour slowly and mix until combined. Stir in the oats. Press 2/3 of the dough (about 3 1/3 cups) evenly into the bottom of the prepared pan. Sprinkle with chocolate pieces and nuts.
In a medium sauce panheat and stir the caramels and milk over low heat until melted and smooth. Drizzle caramel mixture over chocolate and nuts. Take remaining dough and flatten small pieces with fingers and place evenly on top of the caramel layer. Bake for 22-25 minutes or until top is just barely light brown, don’t overbake!. Cool in pan on a wire rack until room temperature. Use foil to lift uncut bars out of pan. Place on cutting board; cut into bars.
