Cold & Craving Oooey Gooey Caramel Chocolate Bars

If you are not from Texas you may laugh at us Texans’ totally shutting down every time we get ice and or snow.  Laugh all you want but apparently we are not equipped to handle too much of the white stuff so we close our schools to the joy of all students, deplete our grocery store shelves satisfying store managers, throw snowballs thrilling the thrower, build cozy fires pleasing our cats, and bake treats to foster blissful cabin mates.

Once again the phone rang at 5:40a.m. to inform me that I could indeed sleep in as there would be no school today.  Ducky!  I think our school district may need to devise a more efficient plan for letting me sleep in if we continue to have snow days.  Those of you accustomed to this weather don’t receive those nerve racking ring tones before the crack of dawn.  Mornings like this require an extra cup or two of coffee, which I enjoyed this frosty morn.  After my eyes were fully open, I got busy whipping up some sweet treats as I knew I’d polished off the Blue Bell Vanilla Bean last night.  The 12* temps they are predicting don’t exactly constitute a craving for another frozen treat.  Here is what I whipped up.  Very easy and quick to prepare and dare I say just what I was craving.

Enjoy!

Oooey Gooey Caramel-Chocolate Bars
Crust:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 cup pecan halves
Topping:
2/3 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup real semi-sweet chocolate chips

Heat oven to 350*.  Combine all crust ingredients except pecans in bowl of a stand mixer, if  you do not own a stand mixer put ingredients in large bowl.  Beat at medium speed until mixture resembles fine crumbs.  Press into bottom of an ungreased 9″ x 13″baking pan.  Place pecans evenly over unbaked crust.
Combine remaining butter and brown sugar in 1 quart saucepan.  Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the entire surface of the mixture begins to boil.  Boil stirring constantly, for 1 minute.  Pour mixture evenly over pecans and crust.  Bake for 18-22 minutes or until the entire layer of caramel is bubbly.  (Do NOT overbake) Remove from oven.  Immediately sprinkle with chips; allow to melt slightly.  Spread melted chips over bars with an off-set spatula.  Cool completely.  Cut into bars.

Next time I make these I’m going to bake them in a smaller pan to make thicker bars.  If you beat me to this idea please comment and let me know how they turn out.  Stay tuned…