I was a bit ambivalent to this pick at first, but then I read the recipe. Hmmm, chocolate chip cookie like dough, melted chocolate, and toffee. Yes, please. What I was equally pleased to see was how easy and quick this recipe sounded. Sometimes, it is nice to have a recipe that does not consume hours upon hours of my precious weekend.
The whole apartment smelled of chocolaty cinnamon cookies while these were baking. I halved this recipe (except for the cinnamon and vanilla), as I felt I did not need 54 caramel crunch bars. Sometimes the amount of butter in a recipe will give me pause, and I have to halve the recipe for the good of my waist line and my arteries. This was one of those times.
I could not find any toffee bits at Whole Foods, so I was just going to use some toasted pecans. Fortunately, on a random stop at Rite Aid Hubby found Heath bars which were covered in milk chocolate. I carefully shaved the chocolate off the sides of the candy bars to expose that heavenly toffee. I was especially careful since I am still recovering from the flaying of my middle finger nail last week. For the amount of money they charge, it would be nice if Wusthof could come up with a knife that could tell the difference between a potato and my finger. Now that would be quite an invention!
I used semisweet chocolate as the topping instead of bittersweet, only because I had some open that I wanted to use up.
I also neglected to foil the pan, so they were a little tricky to get out. Good thing there was a stick of butter in the cookie dough! With the help of my lovely boyfriend, we were able to rescue them from the confines of the Pyrex without too many crunch bar casualties.
These are tasty, but the cinnamon was a little overpowering for me. (My fault, of course, for effectively doubling the cinnamon by not scaling the amount down to a half batch). However, everyone else who tried them gobbled them up, which is always a good sign. My favorite part of these by far was the toffee, I could not stop picking the stray pieces out of the pan. (or right off the tops of the bars, who am I kidding?) I am so glad that we found the Heath bars, these would not have been the same with the nuts. Overall, this was a winner but not a favorite of mine.