Edd Kimber's One Tin Bakes includes a recipe that crosses an Anzac cookie with millionaire's shortbread, replacing the base of millionaire's shortbread with a layer of Anzac cookie. To make the Anzac base, you cook butter with golden syrup and brown sugar until the butter melts; add baking soda and water; and pour the mixture over the dry ingredients (flour, rolled oats, desiccated coconut, and salt). You press the warm mixture into the bottom of a parchment-lined pan and bake it until golden.
To make the caramel layer, you cook unsalted butter with condensed milk, golden syrup, and light brown sugar until the mixture has thickened and darkened a few shades. I judged the consistency and color of the caramel purely on instinct because I failed to notice a small note in the lower left-hand corner of the cookbook page indicating that the caramel will be at 235 degrees when it's ready (unsolicited suggestion for future editions of this cookbook: it would be more useful to have such information included in the body of the recipe). I poured the caramel over the base and let it cool before adding the final layer of melted dark chocolate and putting the bars in the fridge to set.
I ran into some difficulties when I sliced the bars. The Anzac cookie layer was ultra-crisp and brittle, shattering as my knife cut through it. As a result, the edges of all of the bars were pitted and uneven, and piles of oaty detritus ended up strewn all over my cutting board. The texture of the base really surprised me, because the photo in the cookbook (the same photo that appears alongside the recipe in this article) shows slices that are absolutely pristine. That was not the only difference between my bars and the ones in the cookbook photo. Oddly, the proportions of my bars seemed to be quite off. The caramel layer in my slices was taller than the Anzac layer; in the cookbook photo, the reverse is true.
While I would have preferred if the base was not so crisp, these bars were very tasty and I was particularly impressed with the caramel layer. The caramel kept its shape perfectly and was firmly set, but it was creamy and offered almost no resistance when you bit into it. It can be challenging to achieve a caramel layer that finds the happy balance between between too runny or too stiff, and somehow I managed to hit it right on the nose here, even without using a thermometer.
If I made these bars again, I would err on the side of underbaking the base to hopefully get a softer cookie layer. I can appreciate the appeal of the dramatically contrasting textures between a crisp cookie base and a creamy caramel layer. But it's a shame to lose so much of the cookie crust to crumbs that come lose when you cut into the bars or take a bite!
Recipe: "Anzac Caramel Chocolate Slices" from One Tin Bakes by Edd Kimber, recipe available here from Nik Sharma's website.
To make the caramel layer, you cook unsalted butter with condensed milk, golden syrup, and light brown sugar until the mixture has thickened and darkened a few shades. I judged the consistency and color of the caramel purely on instinct because I failed to notice a small note in the lower left-hand corner of the cookbook page indicating that the caramel will be at 235 degrees when it's ready (unsolicited suggestion for future editions of this cookbook: it would be more useful to have such information included in the body of the recipe). I poured the caramel over the base and let it cool before adding the final layer of melted dark chocolate and putting the bars in the fridge to set.
While I would have preferred if the base was not so crisp, these bars were very tasty and I was particularly impressed with the caramel layer. The caramel kept its shape perfectly and was firmly set, but it was creamy and offered almost no resistance when you bit into it. It can be challenging to achieve a caramel layer that finds the happy balance between between too runny or too stiff, and somehow I managed to hit it right on the nose here, even without using a thermometer.
If I made these bars again, I would err on the side of underbaking the base to hopefully get a softer cookie layer. I can appreciate the appeal of the dramatically contrasting textures between a crisp cookie base and a creamy caramel layer. But it's a shame to lose so much of the cookie crust to crumbs that come lose when you cut into the bars or take a bite!
Recipe: "Anzac Caramel Chocolate Slices" from One Tin Bakes by Edd Kimber, recipe available here from Nik Sharma's website.
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