These bars are one of my favorite desserts we have ever made. If you only make one apple dessert recipe this Fall I vote for this one. They were seriously delicious. I debated whether or not to bring them to work. Not because they weren’t good enough, but because I wanted to keep them all for myself. Dessert hoarder. I ended up making a small plate to take to work and a rather large plate to keep in my kitchen. Which is now almost gone. Whoops. Sometimes we make things and even though they are super delicious I only want a couple pieces and then off to work they go. Not these. All day on Sunday I kept sneaking bites.
We had some issues with the caramel sauce. Caramel sauce is just not our thing. Love to eat it, hate to make it. Luckily, we had a jar in the fridge. IF you are good at making caramel sauce then go for it. If not, use a jar and add some cider and spices to it. No shame is using store bought. Maybe someone can help us with our caramel problem. We melt the sugar, move the sauce off the heat and add the cream. Then it just seizes up and we have rock hard candy. I tried putting it back over heat and melting it but it was just a mess. What am I doing wrong?
We cooked these bars for 35 minutes. At first I thought they were under cooked but after sitting for a little bit they were just perfect. Nice and chewy. Slightly under cooked but in a good way. I don’t like pumpkin so we subbed apple cider for the pumpkin, it was perfect. You could definitely taste the apple in the caramel. These would be great heated in the microwave and topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and then a drizzle of caramel sauce. That sounds so good, I might just have to make another batch.
Here is what you’ll need
Melt the sugar and add the cream
Add the cider, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt to the caramel sauce
Combine the butter and sugar and add the the eggs and vanilla
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients
Press half of the dough into a pan
Drizzle with caramel sauce
Spoon the rest of the batter into the pan and sprinkle with fleur de sel
This was more than worth all of the caramel drama we went through
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 1/4 cup apple cider
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- pinch of ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 1/8 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 12 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup white chocolate chips
- 6 tablespoons caramel sauce
- fleur de sel for sprinkling
- Spread the sugar evenly in a medium pot.
- Heat over medium low heat until the sugar dissolves.
- Once it starts melting, stir it unitl it liquifies.
- Cook until the sugar turns an amber color.
- It is best not to do this in a dark pot because you will not be able to see the color change.
- Watch carefully as you do not want to burn it.
- Remove the pot from the heat and add the heavy cream.
- Whisk well.
- Add the apple cider, salt, cinnamon, and vanilla.
- Set aside.
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
- Spray an 8×8 pan with cooking spray.
- Line the pan with foil or parchment paper if you desire. We did not and they came out fine.
- In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; mix.
- In another bowl combine the butter, and both sugars; mix until incorporated.
- To the wet ingredients add the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix well.
- Fold in the white chocolate chips.
- Press half of the dough into the pan.
- Drizzle caramel sauce over the cookie dough.
- Spoon the remaining dough over the caramel layer.
- Sprinkle generously with fleur de sel.
- Bake for 35 minutes.
- Let sit for a couple hours before cutting.
- Note: Evidently we are incapable on making caramel sauce. We messed it up twice. Finally we deiced to just use jarred sauce. We heated 1/4 cup caramel sauce in a small pan over medium low heat. Once melted we added the cider, salt, cinnamon, and vanilla. We let it simmer until it thickened. Then we drizzled it over the cookie dough layer. If you are a more competent caramel maker then i’m sure you will do just fine.
