When I saw a recipe for Salted Caramel Pretzel Blondies on Smitten Kitchen, I had to make them right away. I love the combination of chocolate, pretzels, and caramel -- after all, those are three of the five components of my favorite mass market candy bar, the remarkably underappreciated Take 5 by Hershey (honestly, I do not understand why this fabulous candy bar toils in relative obscurity).
The caramel component of the bars is a homemade dry caramel that you form into a sheet and chop into pieces. You melt sugar in a saucepan and take it to a deep copper color; whisk in butter, salt, and cream; heat the mixture to firm ball stage (around 248 degrees); and pour it out onto a parchment-lined sheet. After it cools and firms up (which doesn't take long, since it's a very thin layer), you cut the caramel into squares. My caramel was slightly brittle, so while I did mostly get neat squares of caramel, there were also some irregular shards that broke off.
The blondie batter is easy to make by hand. You melt butter; whisk in brown sugar, an egg, vanilla, and salt; incorporate flour; and fold in chocolate chips, pretzel pieces, and most of the caramel squares. You transfer the batter to a parchment-lined pan, scatter the remaining caramel squares on top, and bake. When I rotated the pan halfway through baking, I used a toothpick to swirl the melted caramel on top.
The bars were attractive and a breeze to cut and serve. They were really good. You could clearly taste each part: the butterscotch-y blondie, the rich chocolate chips, the crunchy pretzels, and the salted caramel. That said, I couldn't help comparing these bars to another Smitten Kitchen recipe I've made before: the Pretzel Linzers with Salted Caramel. I would rather eat one of the linzer cookies -- with their buttery, crisp cookies sandwiched around a delightfully chewy caramel -- than one of these blondies. But then again, making the linzers requires a lot more work, so the work-to-goodness ratio of the two recipes might actually be about the same.
Recipe: "Salted Caramel Pretzel Blondies" from Smitten Kitchen.
Previous Posts:
The caramel component of the bars is a homemade dry caramel that you form into a sheet and chop into pieces. You melt sugar in a saucepan and take it to a deep copper color; whisk in butter, salt, and cream; heat the mixture to firm ball stage (around 248 degrees); and pour it out onto a parchment-lined sheet. After it cools and firms up (which doesn't take long, since it's a very thin layer), you cut the caramel into squares. My caramel was slightly brittle, so while I did mostly get neat squares of caramel, there were also some irregular shards that broke off.
The blondie batter is easy to make by hand. You melt butter; whisk in brown sugar, an egg, vanilla, and salt; incorporate flour; and fold in chocolate chips, pretzel pieces, and most of the caramel squares. You transfer the batter to a parchment-lined pan, scatter the remaining caramel squares on top, and bake. When I rotated the pan halfway through baking, I used a toothpick to swirl the melted caramel on top.
Recipe: "Salted Caramel Pretzel Blondies" from Smitten Kitchen.
Previous Posts:
- "I Really Want to Like This Cookbook: Pretzel Cake Truffles," November 20, 2018.
- "Pretzel Dust for the Win: Pretzel Linzers with Salted Caramel," February 7, 2018.
- "Bit-O-Honey, Bunch of Flavor: Butterscotch Blondie Bars with Peanut-Pretzel Caramel," September 21, 2015.
- "Baked Sunday Mornings: Bale Bars," February 2, 2014.
- "Salty-Tart-Creamy-Crunchy-Sweet: Sunrise Key Lime Tarts," October 23, 2012.
- "This Confection is Perfection: Chocolate Caramel Pretzel Tart," June 12, 2012.
- "This Outrage is All Right: Outrageous Pretzel Bars," June 10, 2012.
- "Baked Sunday Mornings: Strawberry Jell-O Salad," June 3, 2012.
- "Baked Sunday Mornings: Cowboy Cookies," May 22, 2011.
- "A Prize-Winning Peanut Butter Pretzel Treat," August 27, 2008.
Comments