Our cousin Lois lives in Canada. Our cousin Emi, Lois’ daughter, is wrapping up a couple of years spent living in Japan. Sometimes, they have a light exchange of news via semi-public social media venues, and I feel that I must get involved.
This was one of those times.
Picture it: Holiday 2012. Emi is a touch homesick, and Lois is missing her baby girl. What better than a light chat about making chocolate toffee cookie bars?
Chocolate? Toffee? Cookie bars? Yes, please!
QuickLikeaBunny, I was asking Lois for the recipe, and pretty darned fast, Lois obliged with this simple and oh! so tasty treat.
INGREDIENTS
•3/4 cup butter, softened
•3/4 cup packed brown sugar
•1-1/2 cup all purpose flour
•1 can sweetened condensed milk
•2 tbsp butter
•1 pkg semi-sweet chocolate chips
•1 pkg toffee bits
Heat oven to 350º.
Cream the butter with the flour and brown sugar until well blended, then press into a 13 x 9 baking pan (I lined my glass baking pan with foil to make the finished cookie bars easy to remove from the pan and slice.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the dough is a very light golden brown.
Lois does this next bit on top of the stove, I chose to use my ‘wave. For stove top, combine the milk and the butter in a small pan and stir over medium heat for ten minutes. The mixture may or may not have thickened, don’t worry, it’ll all work out.
For the ‘wave, combine the milk and the butter in a large pitcher (I use my 8 cup Pyrex measuring cup). Add a bamboo skewer – breaking the surface this way will keep the milk from super-heating in the ‘wave and bubbling over – and cook for two minutes at 50% power. Stir and cook for another two minutes.
Pour the milk and butter mixture over the pre-baked cookie dough, then pop back into the oven for 12 to 15 minutes – until the surface is golden and bubbling.
Sprinkle the chocolate chips evenly over the milk layer and pop the pan back into the oven for another two minutes – just until the chocolate is softened and shiny.
Remove from the oven and spread the now melted chocolate evenly over the surface.
Sprinkle with the toffee bits to cover the surface, pressing lightly into the still-soft chocolate, and set aside to cool completely before cutting.
My baking pan has a plastic cover, so I let my bars cool, snapped the lid on, and set them aside over night.
The next morning, using the extra bits of foil hanging over the sides, I pulled the whole thing out of the pan and onto a cutting board before slicing into little squares o’ chocolate-toffee goodness with my extra-long mezzaluna – who says it’s just for cutting ‘za?
Thanks again, Lois and Emi, for a really great cookie. I do have a fair amount leftover, and it’s just me here this week. Mebbe I’ll pop ’em into the freezer, then use them later as the center layer for an Oreo cookie ice cream cake.