Chocolate Chip Carmel Peanut Butter Bars

Now that we are old and married (almost 2 months now) I've been trying to cook dinner more nights, and on top of that, keep up my love of baking, which is hard after I've already been in the kitchen for 3 hours every night prepping and cooking and washing dishes and cleaning up. It's hard to not fix the same thing over and over, so I started a recipe binder and once I make something we both like, I add it to the binder!

These bars are from Mel's Kitchen Cafe, which I have been getting most of my dinners from because they have all been so delicious! So I had a feeling her desserts would be pretty tasty as well. And yup, I was right. This one is going in the binder for sure.

 

Chocolate chip cookies are so good, and with peanut butter..... oh man even better.... and with CARMEL!?!?! That puts these in the best flavor combo ever ranking. My crappy phone pictures don't do them justice. But hopefully they tempt you just enough to go and make them right now!

Chocolate Chip Carmel Peanut Butter Bars
Yields 9X13 pan

Ingredients 

Chocolate Chip cookie bottom:

• 12 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 cup (7 ounces) brown sugar
• 1/2 cup (3.5 ounces) granulated sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 3/4 cups (13.75 ounces) all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups chocolate chips 

Peanut Butter Caramel:

• 10 ounces soft caramels, unwrapped
• 1/3 cup cream or milk
• 1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9X13-inch baking pan with foil and spray liberally with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Whisk the melted butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar together in a large bowl until combined. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well. Add the flour, salt and baking soda and mix until just combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.
3. Spread or press about half (or just slightly more than half) of the batter in the bottom of the prepared pan and bake for 8-9 minutes.
4. While the cookie dough base is baking, add the caramels and cream to a saucepan, heat on low on the stovetop, stirring constantly with heatproof spatula or wooden spoon, until the caramel is melted and smooth. Stir in the peanut butter and vanilla extract.
5. Drizzle the caramel mixture over the top of the baked cookie dough and spread evenly.
6. Pinch the remaining cookie dough between your fingers and crumble over the top of the caramel.
7. Bake for 18-20 minutes until the bars are puffed and the edges are slightly golden.
8. Let the bars cool completely before cutting into squares.

Recipe Source: slightly adapted from Mel's Kitchen Cafe 

And now, I will leave you with my usual cute Wyatt pics. Here he is looking like a person with his head on the pillow. And his Halloween costume didn't quite fit this year.

Croissant French Toast Bake and my 1st WIAW

I love when bloggers post WIAW posts, or What I Ate Wednesday for those who don't know, cause I didn't at first! But really, any day of the week works, and it's interesting when people post what they ate, cause I am always so curious! And love to snoop in people's lives.....ha.... but really I love to see what people are eating along with the picture of course. It's weird and strange, but obviously other people love it too or else people would stop posting about it!

For breakfast, I stopped at Starbucks and got my favorite fancy drink, Peppermint Mocha. I get these year round, not just when they have them at Christmas time! I also had blueberry Belvita biscuits.

 

Of course, I forgot to take a picture of my lunch!! ARG! My first attempt at WIAW is already a failure. But whatever. I'm still doing it! So for lunch I had leftover Mustard Chicken and potatoes. It didn't look very pretty anyway. But it tasted pretty good for my first time making it the night before. 

For dinner, I made this Croissant French Toast Bake from Pinch of Yum's blog. I made it once before, and it was liked by the hubs, but not really by me. It was too squishy and unbaked in the middle. So this time, I baked it for longer, and it was better! It had a crunchy top and outside, and really soft inside, and with a little maple syrup it was so sweet and buttery.

 

I think next time, I would make this for brunch with some sausage links or fruit. It was a little too sweet for dinner by itself!

 Here is the recipe! Adapted from Pinch of Yum

Baked Cinnamon Croissant French Toast

Ingredients

• 3 large croissants, a few days stale
• 3 eggs
• ¾ cup milk
• 3 tablespoons Greek yogurt
• ¼ cup sugar
• ½ tablespoon vanilla extract
• 3 tablespoons flour
• ¼ cup brown sugar
• cinnamon to taste (I used almost a full teaspoon)
• pinch of salt
• 3 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small pieces

Instructions

1. Grease a small baking pan with butter (I just used a small loaf pan). Tear the croissants into small pieces and place in the dish.
2. Whisk the eggs, milk, yogurt, sugar, and vanilla. Pour evenly over bread. Cover and refrigerate overnight in the fridge (or for a few hours if you are short on time).
3. For the topping, mix flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Cut the cold butter in with a food processor or just using your fingers until your mixture looks like small crumbs.
4. When you're ready to eat, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sprinkle crumb mixture over the top of the croissant/egg mixture in the pan. Bake for 30-45 minutes depending on how soft/crispy you want it to be. Make sure the french toast is fully cooked before you remove it from the oven - usually the top looks done before the inside is really done.
5. Top with butter and drizzle with maple syrup.

Some fun things that I've been loving recently are:

These EVOL cups from Target. I like them, and they have a lot of different veggies and flavors, but I'm not sure I LOVE them. But they are easy to take to work as a side instead of chips or something unhealthy!

I LOOOOOOOOOVE THESE Sea Salt Butterscotch caramels!! They are like the candies my grandma used to buy, but so much better. I was skeptical at first since they look so ordinary. They have a good salty flavor, so I think that's why they are so good.

Homemade milkshakes! We got a milkshake somewhere the other day and it was just not good! It was so thick and not chocolatey enough. So I made one at home that I think was a million times better. I also added whipped cream on top, but forgot to take a pic!