This recipe is brilliant. It combines the best of both worlds by putting chocolate chip cookie dough on top of brownie batter and baking them together. The cookie forms a crust that hides the soft, moist brownie underneath.

Recipe: Chipster-Topped Brownies

Makes: 24 brownies (I made 48 minis and one 8x8 pan.)

Ingredients:

The base of this bar is a shortbread cookie with a hint of coffee and cinnamon followed by a layer of melted chocolate and a sprinkle of caramels on top. Instead of buying Heath bars (which aren't typically available in Canada although The Candy Store in Ottawa imports them) or Skor bars, I made my own caramels and pulverized them in my food processor.

One of the best take aways from this recipe was lining the pan with aluminum foil. The liner makes it easy to remove the cookie base from the pan and put it on a cutting board saving your nice pan from the sharp edges of your knife. I also learned a bit more about Heath bars vs Skor bars. Check out my poll on my right sidebar and let me know your favorite treat.

Recipe: Caramel Crunch Bars

Makes: 1 9x13 pan

Ingredients:

You can find the recipe for Caramel Crunch Bars in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours (affiliate link) by Dorie Greenspan or here. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger!

Click here for the recipe for Golden Vanilla Bean Caramels.

Tasting Notes
How can you go wrong with shortbread, chocolate and caramel chunks. It would be fun to play with the shortbread base, but why mess with perfection?

Recipe for Next Week (March 3)
Chocolate Armagnac Cake — The Cake That Got Me Fired on pages 279-281 chosen by Lyb of And then I do the dishes.

These are a favorite around our house at Christmas. What could be better than peanut butter and chocolate? I have two versions of this recipe. Both are good, and I will devour either one if it’s sitting in front of me, but my favorite version is Recipe #1. The second recipe contains oatmeal in the base, which gives it a nice chew (or crunch if you over-bake them).

Recipe 1: Peanut Butter Bars

Makes: one 13x9 pan

Ingredients:

When I was visiting my parents this past summer, my mom gave me some hand-written recipes from my grandmother to keep. For me, "hand-me-down" recipes are the best kind of gift to receive. They have been carefully written down, marked up with notes, splattered with butter, and are torn and brown at the edges. It makes me wonder what hand-me-down recipes I'll be leaving my kids since most of my recipes will be typed up in a blog. Does it have the same personality? Should it?

This is one of the handwritten recipes I found in the pile: Rickety Uncles. It was one of my favorite treats growing up. When visiting my aunt as a child, I would often hope that she had these on the table for our traditional gather-around-the-table-and eat-and-catch-up time after our two-hour car ride to her house.

Rickety Uncles. It's such an unusual name. I found another similar recipe in my grandmother's notebook, but it's called Oatmeal Squares, which doesn't have the same charm. After a bit of digging, one source said it was published in the Milwaukee Journal in Wisconsin around the mid 1950's. I'm not sure this is true. I always thought they were named after my cousin "Rick"!

Although I love these bars plain, I thought I'd improve them slightly by icing the bars with some warm Nutella and flaked hazelnuts. Wow!

Recipe: Rickety Uncles with Warm Nutella™ and Flaked Hazelnuts

Makes: 1 8x8 pan

Ingredients:

I love lemon desserts, but I've never made lemon bars. These are tart lemon bars that are a welcome reprieve from the sweeter dessert fare.

It's like a lemon meringue pie with a shortbread crust and no meringue. Tangy, delicious, and especially good with Dorie Greenspan's peppermint cream.

Bottom
The bottom is a shortbread-like crust that you can easily push into the pan using a measuring cup or your fingers. Ellie's has icing sugar and vanilla that might be even more flavorful. Then you bake it in the oven for a bit.

Middle
The filling is easy because you just whisk it and then bake it off (after you've baked the crust).

Top
Dust with icing sugar, and you're done. You can top with peppermint cream for even more decadence.

Recipe: Lemon Bars

You can find a video of a similar recipe for Lemon Bars here.