Caramel Pecan Oat Bars

...with chocolate chips, because almost everything is improved with chocolate.  Despite being packed with caramel, chocolate and sugar, the oats make these bars seem almost - dare I say - healthy!?

Recipe adapted from: My Baking Addiction
Ingredients - 21 x 31 cm (8 x 12 inch) brownie tin
290g butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
310g flour
2 cups rolled oats
277g brown sugar
1 tsp bicarb soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips
3/4 cup pecans
1 cup caramel (recipe here)

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 175C (350F).  Line your brownie tin with baking paper.

2. Melt the butter in a large heatproof bowl.  Add the vanilla essence.

3. Mix the flour, rolled oats, brown sugar, bicarb soda and salt into the melted butter until all is combined.

4. Press half of the mixture evenly into the lined brownie tin - this is your base.

5. Bake for about 8 minutes, and chop your pecans into rough chunks.

6. Take the base out of the oven and sprinkle the chocolate chips and pecans over it.  Then pour the caramel on top.

7. Using your fingers, break the rest of the oat mixture over the top of the caramel.

8. Bake the slice for another 15 minutes until the top is golden.

9. Let the slice cool before slicing into bars or squares or whatever shape you like.  I dug straight in with a fork and let me tell you, it was amazing!  However, it's much easier to cut the slice up when it's completely cool.

Enjoy!

Caramel Pecan 'Turtle' Brownies

I have seen many 'turtle' recipes on the internet, all involving caramel, pecans and chocolate.  I now know that there is a certain sweet called turtles, but I've never seen them in Australia.

All that aside, these brownies are gorgeously dense and chocolatey, and the caramel-pecan layer adds some extra sweet crunchiness.  My favourite way to eat these is either fresh out of the oven or, for a similar effect, briefly heated for about 10 seconds in the microwave so that the caramel oozes out of the middle and the brownie goes soft and warm.

Recipe adapted from: Averie Cooks
Ingredients - 21 x 31 cm (8 x 12 inch) brownie tin
115g butter
170g dark chocolate
2 eggs
185g white sugar
1 tbsp vanilla essence
1 tbsp instant coffee granules (optional)
115g flour
1 cup pecans
About 1 cup (250mL) salted caramel (recipe and method here, just add salt!)

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 175 C (350 F).  Line a brownie tin with baking paper.

2. Melt the butter and chocolate, mix them until combined.

3. Let the chocolate mixture cool for a bit, then whisk the eggs, sugar, vanilla and coffee in.

4. Stir the flour into the mixture. 

5. Chop the pecans into chunks (not too fine).

6. Pour half the brownie batter into the prepared tin.  Bake it for about 15 minutes until the top has just crusted over - don't overbake it!

7. Take the brownie out of the oven and sprinkle the pecans evenly over the top, then pour the caramel on.

8. Carefully spread the rest of the brownie batter evenly on top.

9. Bake the whole brownie for another 25 minutes.

10. Let the brownie cool for a while before cutting it, as it will be difficult when the caramel's all warm and liquid.  You can even put it in the fridge for a while to make sure that everything's set.

These brownies can be enjoyed cold...

Or they can be warmed up in the microwave so that the caramel's melted.  So delicious!

Chocolate & Salted Caramel Cupcakes

For her birthday, one of my coworkers was specific with her flavour request - she wanted chocolate and salted caramel.  (I'll forever be chuffed at how excited she was that I would be making her birthday treats!  She said that she'd be thinking about what to request ever since she started working with me!)

I decided to change things up a bit and do some funky cupcakes with a gooey salted caramel centre.  I love how these turned out - the cupcake itself was perfectly moist, the buttercream turned out beautifully and it was heaps of fun to inject the cupcakes with the salted caramel!  I hope you enjoy these creations as much as I did.

Ingredients - 24 cupcakes (recipe adapted from: Carla's Confections via Bits of Sunshine)
246g flour
500g white sugar
50g cocoa powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp bicarb soda
250mL buttermilk (can substitute 250mL milk and 1 tbsp lemon juice)
125mL vegetable oil (I used peanut oil)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup hot coffee (I used instant coffee and hot water)

Ingredients - caramel buttercream (recipe adapted from: I Heart Eating)
375g butter
125mL salted caramel
1 tsp vanilla essence
415g icing sugar
Dash of cream if required to make it more pipe-able

Ingredients and method for caramel - use my caramel recipe here.  It's best to make the caramel in advance and let it cool while you do other things.  You can even make it a day or two beforehand.
To transform it from ordinary caramel to salted, I added a generous helping of salt to taste.  If I measured it, it was probably about 2 teaspoons, but you can go more or less if you wish!

Method - cupcakes
1. Preheat the oven to 180 C (350 F), and prepare muffin tins with patty pans.  

2. Combine all the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder and bicarb soda) in one bowl.

3. Combine the buttermilk, vegetable oil, eggs and vanilla in another bowl.  Keep the coffee separate.

4. Stir the wet mixture into the dry mixture a bit at a time.

5. Finally, stir the coffee into the batter.  It will be very liquid at this point.

6. Fill the cupcake liners with the batter to about 2/3 full.  These cupcakes rise a lot, so err on the side of caution!  I use a piping bag to do this.

7. Bake the cupcakes for about 20 - 25 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.  Let them cool.

Method - caramel buttercream
1. Cream the butter until smooth.

2. Add the caramel and vanilla, beat until combined.

3. Add the icing sugar about 1 cup at a time, beating in between additions.  I sifted the icing sugar for ensured smoothness.

4. Taste test to make sure that it's caramel-y enough; if it's not, just add a little more caramel!

5. If the buttercream is too stiff, add 1 tbsp cream and beat until smooth.  Repeat this step until you reach the desired consistency.  If you're spreading the icing rather than piping it, you can afford to make it softer, but make sure it will be able to hold its shape if you're piping!

Assembly
1. Make sure your cupcakes are completely cool.

2. Pour some of the salted caramel into a small piping bag with a small piping tip.  Stab the piping tip into the centre of the cupcakes and squeeze the caramel in;  I squeezed until I could see the cupcake start to inflate with the volume of caramel.  Don't worry if it oozes out the top a bit, the caramel all soaks in to the cake to give a gooey centre.

3. Use the caramel buttercream to ice your cupcakes in any way you desire.  I went for my usual piping bag with a star tip.

These cupcakes are very moist, and the caramel inside them is soft and gooey, so I recommend using plates and forks to eat them!

Fluffy Chocolate Cupcakes with Caramel Cream Cheese Icing

Hello all!  I have some delicious chocolate cupcakes with caramel cream cheese icing to share with you today.  They're nice and simple to make; I whipped these up for a work colleague's birthday.

Recipe adapted from: How Sweet It Is
Ingredients - cupcakes
1 egg
140g brown sugar
145g (1/2 cup) milk
135g (1/2 cup + 1 tbsp) cream
125g butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp sour cream
175g flour
15g cocoa powder
1 1/4 tsp bicarb soda

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 175C (350F).

2. Whisk egg and sugar until smooth and combined.

3. Melt the butter.

4. Add the milk, cream, melted butter, vanilla and sour cream to the egg mixture and stir until combined.

5. Add the flour, cocoa powder and bicarb to the batter and stir until combined.  Sift the cocoa powder for best results.

6. Spoon the batter into cupcake tins lined with patty pans.  I always leave quite a lot of space between the batter and the top of the patty pans because I am paranoid about overflowing cupcakes.

7. Bake for about 15 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.

8. Let the cupcakes cool before icing them.

Caramel Cream Cheese Icing
Ingredients: 400g cream cheese, 1 cup caramel (recipe here)

Method: Simply beat the cream cheese until soft and fluffy (I use the K beater on my Kitchenaid), then add the caramel and beat until smooth and combined.

This icing is easy to make and great paired with chocolate cakes or cupcakes; it works well when piped, as shown on the cupcakes here.  You can use more or less caramel to suit your tastes, even add some vanilla essence or cream if you so desire.

I also made a couple of whoopie-pie-like morsels using an old dome-indented tin (not sure what this is called a gem scone tin, thank you Diane!  I believe my great-grandmother gave it to me) and sandwiched the domes together with the icing.

Peanut Caramel Chip Cookies

Mum bought some caramel chips from the supermarket recently, and they'd been sitting up with the millions of packets of choc chips for a while before I decided to make this recipe.  Boy, was it worth it!  These cookies have an almost shortbread-like texture, crunchy and melty; the toasted peanuts added crunch; and the caramel chips were a delightful burst of sweetness.  Needless to say, these cookies didn't last very long in my house. 

Recipe Adapted From: Bake Or Break
Ingredients
310g flour
1 tsp bicarb soda
1/2 tsp salt
185g butter
125g white sugar
60g brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla essence/extract
1 cup caramel chips (the original recipe asks for toffee chips, but I have no idea where to get those, so I used caramel chips instead and they were delicious)
1 cup peanuts

Method

1. Chop the peanuts into smaller bits (halves are a good size).  In a frying pan or under the grill setting of your oven, toast the peanuts until golden brown.  Set aside to cool.

2. Preheat oven to 175 C (350 F).

3. Beat the butter, white sugar and brown sugar together until light and fluffy.

4. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until combined.

5. Stir the flour, bicarb and salt into the butter mixture.

6. Add the caramel chips and peanuts.  Mix until combined and the bits are all dispersed in the dough evenly.  (The dough tastes amazing, by the way).

7. Roll tablespoon-sized blobs of dough into balls.  Place them on your silicone mat/baking paper covered baking trays and press them down a bit until they're flatter on the top.  (This is so they don't come out of the oven in slightly-melted sphere shapes - they're more difficult to eat when they're like that!)

8. Bake for 15 mins or until golden brown.

9. Let cool on wire racks and consume.

Caramel

Ah, caramel - I had searched for an easy recipe to use with my brownies, not realising that a perfect one existed right on my bookshelf.  Thank you again, Nigella.  This caramel is thick, rich and absolutely delectable; you can do heaps of things with it.  Make caramel frosting, caramel brownies and I bet it'd taste amazing poured over vanilla ice cream.

Ingredients

300g caster sugar

125mL cold water

250mL double cream

Method

1. In a heavy based saucepan, dissolve the sugar in the water over a low heat.  Do not stir it, or the sugar will crystallise.

2. When the sugar seems dissolved, turn up the heat and boil until the mixture turns a darkish golden colour.  Make sure you don't cook it for too long, or it will burn!

This should take about 10 minutes or so.

3. When the caramel is golden, take the pan off the heat and slowly whisk in the cream.  Don't have a fit if it fizzes and bubbles furiously!  If the cream doesn't completely combine and the mixture is lumpy, put the pan back on the heat.

4. Leave it to cool.

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I used this caramel in a butterscotch frosting, that was hailed as 'the best frosting I've ever had' by one of my Mum's colleagues.

To make butterscotch frosting, beat 400g cream cheese until smooth and softened.  Add 1 cup of the caramel and beat gently to combine.  Spread over a delicious cake.

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This caramel would be pretty much perfect (...I think) to use in caramel brownies.

To make caramel brownies, use this brownies recipe.  Pour half of the brownie mix into the tin and bake for about 10 minutes, so the top is a bit baked.  Pour a layer of caramel over the top and spread gently.  Pour the rest of the brownie mixture over the top of the caramel, so there are 3 layers: slightly cooked brownie, caramel, then uncooked brownie on the top.

Bake for another 20 minutes or so.