In the headnote to the recipe for "Toffee Bars" in Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy, Alice Medrich says that a friend's aunt gave her the recipe for "this especially rich and happy marriage of American flavors -- crunchy, shattering caramel, pecans, and milk chocolate on a thin shortbread crust."
You can make this recipe without a mixer. The shortbread crust is a mixture of melted butter, sugar, vanilla, salt, and flour that you press into the bottom of a lined pan. You scatter pecans over the crust, cover the pan loosely with foil (so that the pecans will not burn but will still get toasted), and bake the crust until lightly golden. While it's in the oven, you make the toffee by bringing water and brown sugar to a boil, and stirring in butter. You pour the hot toffee over the partially-baked crust and toasted pecans, and put the pan back in the oven until the toffee is bubbling. The final step is to scatter on milk chocolate (I used Cacao Barry pistoles).
When I took my first bite of a cooled bar, I immediately realized that I had just baked the homemade version of saltine toffee or matzo toffee -- which are the same carbs+toffee+nuts+chocolate dessert, but made with saltines or matzos instead of homemade shortbread. The other big difference is that the saltine and matzo versions are usually broken up into pieces for serving, instead of being sliced into bars.
The buttery shortbread topped with crisp toffee, nuts, and chocolate is candy-like and addictive. But I can't say that this version is better than the saltine or matzo varieties. I think you can put toffee, chocolate, and nuts on anything crisp and salty and it will taste good!
Recipe: "Toffee Bars" from Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies by Alice Medrich, recipe available here (without ingredient weights) from The Mercury News.
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