Salted Caramel Chocolate Chunk Bars
I originally had these bars at book club sans chocolate chunks. They were pretty amazing, however I knew with chocolate they would be flipping’ awe-sssSUM! You know that moment when you take a bite of something and it’s so good, you need to pause, close your eyes, and thank the Lord above for taste buds? Yah….that’s what I’m talkin’ bout with these salted caramel chocolate chunk bars, they’re going to make your world go all slow-mo.
You heard me. Slow. MO.
You know how sometimes you read a food blog and they go on and on about how yummy, and delicious, and scrumptious, and perfectly delectable and amazing their cookie of the day is? And then like it’s just a regular ol cookie with pretzels in it or whatever…..ya well this is not one of those blog posts cause, wait for it…..
1 pound of butter
50 caramel candies
chocolate chunk pieces
You do the math. Ok I’ll do the math. I DID the math and it equalled perfectly delectable scrumptious yumminess!
These bars take a few steps, they aren’t as easy as these bars, but believe me the steps are worth it! Bake a third of the shortbread in the pan, melt the caramel pieces, then crumble the rest of the shortbread + chocolate chunks over the melted caramel and bake again. See a few steps, but nothing too complicated!!
Honestly, the hardest part is allowing them to cool so you can cut them into nice little squares.
What do you see here? School has been kicking every booty in this house. Between college essays being finished off, a tough load of classes by all, plus other various sports, another child taking drivers training, and scads of fall yard work to be done, there hasn’t been too much time for fun….which as a mom of three teens I want them to have fun, but not too much if ya know what I mean. I do think a sweet treat is always a good spirit lifter. A delicious little nibble and a glass of milk to get them through it!
Salted Caramel Chocolate Chunk Bars
Ingredients
- 4 stick Butter 1 pound, room temperature
- 1/2 cup Granulated Sugar
- 1/2 cup Brown Sugar
- 1 1/2 cups Powdered Sugar
- 2 teaspoons Vanilla
- 4 cups Flour
- 1 14 ounce bag Caramel Candy Cubes unwrapped (approximately 50 candies)
- 1/3 cup Half and Half
- 1/2 tablespoon Sea Salt
- 1 cup Semi Sweet Chocolate Chunks I used Nestle brand
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and spray a 9×13 baking pan lightly with cooking spray.
- Place butter and sugars in mixer, beat until creamed. Scrape down sides of mixing bowl and beat another minute. Add vanilla and beat another 30 seconds. Gradually add flour a half cup at a time. Dough will become thick like cookie dough. Take one-third of the dough and press into the bottom of pan. Place in oven and bake for 15 minutes. Place remainder of the dough in the refrigerator. (this will help it get crumbly)
- Unwrap caramels and place them in a medium-sized glass bowl pour half and half over caramels, place in microwave and gradually melt on high at 30 second intervals stirring in between each until caramels are melted and smooth. This step takes about 3 minutes. (or 6 x 30 seconds)
- Remove bottom crust from oven pour caramel over crust and spread evenly with spatula, sprinkle sea salt evenly over caramel. Remove dough from refrigerator, crumble half of the dough over caramel. Sprinkle chocolate chunks evenly over bars, as well as the remainder of the dough. Return bars to oven and bake an additional 30-40 minutes or until bars just start to get a little brown on top.
- Place pan on a cooling rack allow to cool for 1 hour before cutting into squares.
Notes
This recipe was adapted from this recipe from the blog Cookies and Cups.
Do you ever bake your family a special treat to help get them through a particularly hard or busy week? What’s their favorite?
XO, Sheila
P.S. Not that I’m thinking about Christmas or anything…since we haven’t even had Halloween yet, not that Halloween ranks anywhere near Christmas in my book so, in that case, I guess it’s ok if I’m jumping ahead to the Lord’s b-day and skipping over the devil’s holiday Phew run-on sentence, string of thoughts. My point of this whole post-sancript was that these bars would be the perfect addition to your holiday cookie-baking list. It’s good to have one bar on the plate right?!
Third pan today!! I didn’t have quite the amount of caramel bits so I added some ice cream topping!! I had wondered how that would work and now I know!! Today’s batch was for a friends birthday so I lined the pan with parchment and just lifted the whole thing out and gave it to her in one big piece. They were still warmish and I didn’t want to cut into them. The cookie exchange was fun even though I over cooked the bars a bit. I used a stoneware pan and they cooked faster than I expected in it. The caramel was a bit chewy on the edges. I had to eat that part, to protect the others:) Thanks for telling me about the caramel topping! I think these bars may be a regular around here even though they aren’t the cheapest treat! Merry Christmas to you and yours too!!!!
Made them once and I’m making them again! I added toasted pecans and they’ll be going in there again. They are very hard to stay out of!!! This time instead of eating most of the pan myself, I’m taking them to a cookie exchange. Instead of unwrapping 50 caramel pieces, I used caramel bits that are just right for melting, no unwrapping needed.
Caramel bits! So much easier, thanks for the tip. I actually could not find caramels so I used caramel ice cream topping, they are a little bit gooier (spelling?) than usual but it worked! Enjoy your cookie exchange and Merry Christmas! XO Sheila
Wow, all gooey and caramelly. These would be good for every holiday – saints or sinners 🙂