Caramel Brownie Cookie Crumb Bars

    This recipe is a wonderful concoction of brownie, caramel, and cookie! 

     The first time I made this it was because I had some leftover oatmeal chocolate chip cookies from a sale I had been a vendor at. The cookies had gotten too hard to be able to eat (well, unless you dipped them into tea or coffee, which was yummy!), so I needed to just get them used up in another way.

    I thought if they were a crumb or crumble type thing for something else, it would be deee-lish! I found this recipe from Chelsea's Messy Apron, and adapted it to suit me and what I had one hand. 

    I've made this with from-scratch brownies, boxed brownie mix, even a modified-to-brownies chocolate cake mix. I've used wrapped caramels, as well as caramel bits, and I used my leftover cookies, but also store-bought oatmeal chocolate chip cookies! So, I mean, you can make this treat in many ways! And you should!

    Perfect, fudgy brownies topped with caramel and more chocolate, then topped with a crumble made from cookies? Yes, it is every bit as delicious as it sounds!  
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Caramel Brownie Cookie Crumb Bars
Adapted from Chelsea's Messy Apron

Ingredients:

For the Brownie Base:

• 1 Cup flour
• 2 Cups sugar
• 1 Cup salted butter, melted
• 4 Eggs
• 2/3 cup cocoa powder

For the Caramel Layer: 

• 1 1/2 Cups caramel bits, or 1 small bag of caramels (11oz), unwrapped**
• 2 Cups chocolate chips (semi-sweet)

For The Cookie Top:

• 2 Cups chopped oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (get a nice, hard/crunchy cookie)
• 1/4 Butter, melted

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 350, and lightly grease a 9x13 inch baking dish, and line with parchment, leaving a little over hang on the sides to use later as "handles"
2.  Let's make the brownies!:   In a medium bowl, combine the flour, sugar and cocoa powder. In another small bowl, whisk together the butter and eggs. Add the egg mixture into the flour mixture, stirring until just combined. Pour this batter into the prepared baking dish, and bake until nearly, but not quite, finished-around 20-25 minutes​
3. While the brownies are baking, take your chopped cookies, and add the 1/4 Cup melted butter to them and stir to combine, set aside
4. If using the wrapped caramel squares, now is the time to open them, and cut them into smaller chunks (each square into 4 pieces works)
5. ​Once brownies are nearly done, take out of the oven and evenly spread caramels and chocolate chips over the base, then "sprinkle" the cookie/butter crumb mixture over top
6. Return pan back into the oven, and bake for another 10-15 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the centre is clean, and top is crunchy and golden
7. Let cool in the pan for an hour or more before using the parchment handles to carefully lift the squares out of the pan to cut

    Oh, yum. These bars are just the tops! For real, they are just too tasty to fully describe! 

    So, this weekend-any plans?

    Saturday we go over to the neighbours for an annual pancake breakfast! My wonderful neighbour has a huge maple syrup shack (it's an enormous shop, really!) where he's been really, really, really busy, working away at turning the sap from our beloved maple trees into wonderful maple syrup! He doesn't even personally like maple syrup, but his father made it, and he wants to carry on in his tradition. So he hosts a wonderful pancake breakfast to share/get rid of some of the syrup he's made! : )  It's really so great, we always enjoy it a lot!

    Have a good weekend!

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