I regularly receive countless promotional emails with recipes and I basically ignore all of them. First, I already have a cookbook-buying compulsion and a huge backlog of recipes on my to-bake list, so I'm usually not actively looking for more recipes. Second, I tend to stick to recipes from sources I know and trust -- over time, I figure out which authors and cookbooks are reliable, and I also often try recipes from epicurious.com if they have large numbers of favorable reviews.
But every once in a while a random recipe email catches my eye. A few weeks ago I received a Food and Wine electronic newsletter with "Salty-Sweet Desserts" in the subject line. When I opened the message, there was a link to a slideshow of salty-sweet desserts and the first slide showed some salted caramel squares from Zoe Nathan of Huckleberry in Santa Monica. I've never been to Huckleberry, but I have tried a couple of recipes from the bakery (zucchini tea cake and whole-wheat apple butter cake), courtesy of the Los Angeles Times' Culinary SOS column. I can't resist salted caramel, and I figured that Zoe Nathan must be pretty talented to have two recipes make it into Culinary SOS (Culinary SOS is definitely on my list of "trusted" recipe sources), so I thought the recipe was worth a shot.
The squares include a shortbread crust that is fully baked by itself and then topped with a layer of salted caramel. You make the crust by creaming butter and adding powdered sugar, eggs, flour, and salt. The recipe says you are supposed to press the resulting dough into an even layer in a 9-inch by 13-inch pan, but my dough was a sticky, creamy consistency and I used an offset spatula to spread it into the pan. You briefly freeze the dough until it's firm and then blind bake it.
I have a set of ceramic pie weights and a metal pie chain; I lined the frozen crust with parchment and weighed it down with both the weights and the chain before baking. Unfortunately, because the pan was so large, even the weights and chain together were not heavy enough to get the job done. When I took out the pan after 35 minutes and removed the weights and parchment, I could see that the crust in the middle of the pan had puffed up a bit, and the crust had shrunk significantly (probably 1/2 inch all the way around). I brushed the partially-baked crust with egg white and put the it back in the oven to bake until golden.
Once the crust is cool, you pour on a caramel made from sugar, water, cream, vanilla bean, and salt. The recipe doesn't say anything about reserving salt to sprinkle on top, but the photo accompanying the article shows salt on top of the caramel layer. So I added the full amount of salt specified in the recipe to the caramel, and then sprinkled a little extra fleur de sel on top. I chilled the bars overnight before cutting them.
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I cut the bars immediately out of the fridge, and the crust portion was crumbly and broke off unevenly on many of the bars (the ones in the picture above were the neatest squares I was able to manage). I think the crumbly problem with the crust resulted both because the crust was so thick (due to not being weighed down enough during the blind bake) and because I cut the bars when they were so cold. The recipe says to bring the bars to room temperature before cutting, but I had assumed it simply meant that they should be served at room temperature and ignored the instruction. At least the caramel was perfectly easy to cut through even when cold.
I love these bars. They reminded me of the inside of a Twix Bar, except better. Delicious chewy, salty caramel, with a terrific buttery cookie crunch. The bars are definitely much tastier at room temperature than they are chilled -- the caramel has a softer texture and both the caramel and crust have a fuller flavor when they're not cold. I will definitely be making these again.
Recipe: "Salted Caramel Squares" from Zoe Nathan of Huckleberry.
But every once in a while a random recipe email catches my eye. A few weeks ago I received a Food and Wine electronic newsletter with "Salty-Sweet Desserts" in the subject line. When I opened the message, there was a link to a slideshow of salty-sweet desserts and the first slide showed some salted caramel squares from Zoe Nathan of Huckleberry in Santa Monica. I've never been to Huckleberry, but I have tried a couple of recipes from the bakery (zucchini tea cake and whole-wheat apple butter cake), courtesy of the Los Angeles Times' Culinary SOS column. I can't resist salted caramel, and I figured that Zoe Nathan must be pretty talented to have two recipes make it into Culinary SOS (Culinary SOS is definitely on my list of "trusted" recipe sources), so I thought the recipe was worth a shot.
The squares include a shortbread crust that is fully baked by itself and then topped with a layer of salted caramel. You make the crust by creaming butter and adding powdered sugar, eggs, flour, and salt. The recipe says you are supposed to press the resulting dough into an even layer in a 9-inch by 13-inch pan, but my dough was a sticky, creamy consistency and I used an offset spatula to spread it into the pan. You briefly freeze the dough until it's firm and then blind bake it.
I have a set of ceramic pie weights and a metal pie chain; I lined the frozen crust with parchment and weighed it down with both the weights and the chain before baking. Unfortunately, because the pan was so large, even the weights and chain together were not heavy enough to get the job done. When I took out the pan after 35 minutes and removed the weights and parchment, I could see that the crust in the middle of the pan had puffed up a bit, and the crust had shrunk significantly (probably 1/2 inch all the way around). I brushed the partially-baked crust with egg white and put the it back in the oven to bake until golden.
Once the crust is cool, you pour on a caramel made from sugar, water, cream, vanilla bean, and salt. The recipe doesn't say anything about reserving salt to sprinkle on top, but the photo accompanying the article shows salt on top of the caramel layer. So I added the full amount of salt specified in the recipe to the caramel, and then sprinkled a little extra fleur de sel on top. I chilled the bars overnight before cutting them.
.JPG)
I love these bars. They reminded me of the inside of a Twix Bar, except better. Delicious chewy, salty caramel, with a terrific buttery cookie crunch. The bars are definitely much tastier at room temperature than they are chilled -- the caramel has a softer texture and both the caramel and crust have a fuller flavor when they're not cold. I will definitely be making these again.
Recipe: "Salted Caramel Squares" from Zoe Nathan of Huckleberry.
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