Has anyone else noticed the “salted caramel” flavor trend? I first discovered salted-caramel when we visited Nesbitt’s Orchard & Nursery in Prescott Wisconsin this past autumn. They were offering Izzie’s Salted Caramel ice cream. It was love at first bite!
Recently I’ve been coming across a bunch of awesome looking recipes that include salted caramel. My friend and blogger extrordnaire, Emily Loerke of “Today’s Letters,”wrote about a favorite recipe of hers called Caramel Slice that she got here. And the person on that blog got it from Bon Appetit. When I read about the shortbread crust topped with gooey caramel, chocolate and sea salt I just knew I had to give the recipe a whirl. Let me just say…These are AWESOME! This is definitely a recipe worth sharing!
~Caramel & Chocolate Squares with Sea Salt~
makes 16-20
crust:
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 tbs ice water
1 egg yolk
toppings:
14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup brown sugar
6 tbs unsalted butter, diced
2 tbs dark corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
6 oz bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1-2 tbs Maldon sea salt
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. grease a 8 1/2-inch square metal baking pan. Blend flour, brown sugar, cornstarch and salt in a food processor. Add butter and pulse until a coarse meal forms. Add ice water and egg yolk and blend just until moist clumps form. Press dough evenly into bottom of prepared pan. Pierce all over with a fork. Bake 20 minutes or until golden brown. Cool completely.
Whisk together condensed milk, brown sugar, butter, corn syrup and vanilla in a medium saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves, butter melts and mixture comes to a boil. Insert a candy thermometer and boil gently until caramel is thick and temperature reaches 225 degrees F. Whisk constantly to prevent from burning. pour caramel evenly over cooled crust and let set 15 minutes. Melt chocolate in the microwave at 15 second intervals, stirring occasionally. Be careful to not over-cook the chocolate. Remove from microwave when just melted. Spread melted chocolate evenly over caramel layer. Sprinkle with sea salt and refrigerate until set (at least one hour). This can be made three days ahead if covered and refrigerated. Cut into bars and enjoy!
~Melissa
I am going to try this!
Careful! They’re addictive! 😉
These will be perfect with a cup of French press tomorrow. French press Friday baby!
Jeff, what a great idea! did you come up with that title? LOL
Well.. It’s just a good, obvious title for such a day! Bwaha
Yes. We should feature this on the blog.
Made these for church last night. They were fantastic. Love the salted caramel and chocolate.
Sheryl, I am so pleased you enjoyed them. This recipe is a keeper. 😉
Sounds a little diffult and time consuming but yummy enough to give it a try!!
It’s really not too bad as far as difficulty or time goes. I think you’ll be surprised how easy these little yummies are to put together. 😉
Thank you for your nice article,i bookmarked Caramel & Chocolate Squares with Sea Salt ChinDeep on digg and i will link back to your post
thanks so much!
How did I miss this before, yum! Added to the must make list!
enjoy!
What a sweet and salty treat! I love it!
It really is! Thanks for commenting! 🙂
I’ve been making this for years, but not with the salt in the caramel and I’m a bit scared to do it incase its not liked. Maybe I should buy some salted caramels to try, because I would like to make this version of Millionaires shortbread xx
Oh my! I think you have to give the salted caramel a try. it is SOOOOO very good! 🙂 xo