White Chocolate Caramel Brownies

You know when you have one of those days? The ones where you don't want to do much, but you think that cooking or baking will make you feel better? I had one of those days yesterday. My husband made it worse, b/c he was having that kind of day as well.

So I looked through my cabinets at what I had on hand (see previous rant about how much money we spend at grocery store). I had cream cheese, white chocolate squares, eggs, peanuts, caramel. Off to Internet to look at what I could make.

Cheesecake (too much effort)
Chocolate White Chocolate Chip cookies (not enough semi-sweet chocolate in the house)
Blondies
Some kind of nutty bark thing.

Husband decided nutty bark thing was going to be too sweet, so we went with Blondies. Only he wanted to add caramel to it. Oh-kay. So he started unwrapping caramels, probably about 50, while I made the recipe.

Blondies
C/O Food Network

1 1/2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
1 cup unsalted butter
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
About 1 1/2 cups butterscotch, semisweet chocolate, peanut butter, or white chocolate chips, optional

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9 by 13-inch glass baking dish.
Put the sugar in a large bowl. Melt the butter in a small skillet or in the microwave in a glass measuring cup. Stir the butter into the sugar until smooth, cool to room temperature.

Meanwhile, in another medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together.

Beat the eggs and vanilla into the sugar mixture. Add the flour mixture a bit at a time and mix until a smooth thick batter forms. Fold in the chips, as desired.

Spoon the batter to the prepared dish and spread to evenly fill the dish. Bake until the blondies are light brown around the edges and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20 to 25 minutes.

Remove from the oven and let cool slightly. Invert onto a rack and cool completely. Cut into squares and serve.

So here is how we incorporated the caramel. Hubs melted the caramel in the microwave with a little bit of milk. We then used a square pyrex dish and put half the blondie mixture in it. Then poured the melted caramel on top, then topped it with the remaining mixture. It was pretty gooey when it was finished but I didn't want to keep cooking it. They were delicious, easy to make and gooey goodness!