Caramelitas

My husband is the hunkiest man I know.  He is a great cook. He hunts for our children during hide and seek with the kind of enthusiasm and glee usually reserved for 5 year olds.  He watches The Bachelor with me and engages in conversation about why so and so should and shouldn’t be picked. He is a wonderful provider.  He is so funny he can make me pee my post-I-had-a-baby pants.  He is a man of few faults.

But, like I said, he does have a few.  For one, he subscribes to the “if it’s yellow let it mellow” theory.  I do not like this.  At all.  He never, and I do mean NEVER throws his dirty laundry into the correct color-sorted bin.  He steals my bath towels, and, I am sorry to say, often asks me at 4pm the evening before if I can please bake something for him to take into work. Tomorrow.

That said, he did spend like 100 hours with his enormous fingers cramming two teeny tiny little heart shaped pictures of my kids into a locket for me on Mother’s Day, and he can always fix my computer, and he never leaves for work in the morning without giving me a kiss goodbye.

So I guess I’ll keep him. 😉

These caramelitas from Lulu The Baker were something I had pinned on Pinterest months ago, in my “To Do” folder.  When my husband called me from work today needing something for tomorrow, they are what I had the ingredients to make.  So I did.

They are very, very sweet and rich. And delicious.  They are messy, messy, messy.  Why wouldn’t they be? They are like the perfect oatmeal cookie, stuffed with caramel and chocolate.

If I were going to do it over, I would increase the amount of the oatmeal cookie dough by 50%.  I didn’t think there was quite enough of it, but it was so, so delicious.  Recipe below is as written.

Enjoy

Recipe from Lulu The Baker

Ingredients:

32 caramel squares, unwrapped (or 1 1/4 cups of caramel sauce- I used Ina Garten’s homemade caramel sauce for mine.  As Ina would say: Store bought is also fine. I add a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of butter to Ina’s recipe.  If you end up using caramel sauce, you do not need the heavy cream listed below.)
1/2 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup flour
1 cup rolled oats (NOT the quick cooking kind)
1 teaspoon baking soda
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°

Combine caramels and cream in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until completely smooth; set aside. 

In a separate bowl, combine melted butter, brown sugar, flour, oats, and baking soda.  (Again, I suggest increasing the ingredients listed above by 50%)

Pat half of the oatmeal mixture into the bottom of an 8×8″ pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. 

Remove pan from oven and sprinkle chocolate chips over crust. Pour caramel mixture over chocolate chips. Crumble remaining oatmeal mixture over caramel. 

Return to oven and bake an additional 15-20 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned. The caramel is going to bubble all over. Don’t freak out.  Remove from oven and cool completely before cutting.  Cutting is a messy task, but worth it.

I had to place mine in the fridge for a couple of hours for them to set up completely.

Double the amounts to make a 9×13 pan of these.