Name That Carol

Pete sings: "Deeka bez! Deeka bez! Deeka aaahhh way!" Can you translate?

I am up baking for tomorrow's cookie exchange. My mission, when I chose to accept it, was to bake 9 dozen cookies for tomorrow. Nine dozen! That's a whole lotta cookies. Two women have since dropped out, leaving me only 7 dozen to bake, but that exceeds my cookie output for, oh, probably all of 2007. (Elwood P. bakes lots more cookies than I do. Isn't that domestic of him?)

Ergo: bar cookies. (I hate the scooping up and splodging on the baking sheet routine.) These are called toffee tops. Preheat oven to 350 and prepare an 8x8 pan. (Prepare = line with foil long enough to hang over the edges so you can lift the cookies out of there. You'll be gouging out your eyes if you try to scoop them out of the pan.) Combine one and a quarter cups flour, a quarter teaspoon of salt, 2 T. brown sugar (packed), a stick of cold butter (cubed), a quarter-cup of slivered almonds, and a quarter teaspoon of almond extract, and blitz in the food processor. After everything is combined I add a tablespoon of cold water to cut down on the crumbly factor, but this is not in the recipe. Press into your pan, making a little bit of a rim at the edges so you do not glue the bars to your pan in the next step. Bake for 12 minutes. You want the crust to be slightly firm.

Combine 1/2 c. brown sugar (packed), 1/3 c. butter, and a tablespoon of water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and then let it boil for a minute, stirring intermittently. If you can, time it so that your toffee layer is done boiling just as your timer beeps for the crust. Pour the toffee over the crust and pop it back into the oven for 10 more minutes.

When the ten minutes are up (you want the toffee bubbling vigorously in the oven), pull out the pan. Let it set up for a minute, just so you have a bit of a crust. Sprinkle over 3/4 c. of chocolate chips. Cover the pan for a few minutes so the chips soften up, and spread with a knife to make a smooth coating. Sprinkle slivered almonds over the chocolate, pressing them in gently so they stick to the cookies when the chocolate firms up. Cut them fairly small -- they're pretty rich.

In addition to the 8x8 batch, I doubled the recipe and put it in a 9x13, and made a recipe-and-a-quarter in a 9x9 pan. I am hoping that my 9x13 batch will be all right in the morning, because its toffee layer is a little wobbly tonight. I had an expat Southerner moment while smoothing chocolate over toffee lava, when I said to myself, "Oh, no, it's not settin' up right." Midwesterners do not talk about things "settin' up right." What do they say, though? I've lived in the Midwest for...hm, I think it's 17 of the last 20 years, and I'm not quite sure what a Midwesterner says when she gets molten toffee lava instead of partly solidified toffee aa or toffee pahoehoe (that one's for you, Arwen).

Comments

[Becky]

Pete sings a cute jingle bells!

[Arwen]

Jingle bells?

I am with you on hating the scooping and preferring bar cookies. Toffee tops sound delicious. I have no idea, though, what a native Midwesterner - and I am one - would say if her toffee didn't set up properly. I would probably say, "Shoot! It's not getting hard enough!" but am I the prototype Midwesterner? Hard to say.

I'd almost forgotten we called our little one Pahoehoe when she was in the womb, but now I'm giggling at the thought of toffee pahoehoe. It could be worse, though: you could have toffee 'a'a!

[Tracy]

The recipe looks good - checks cupboard - nope, I don't have almond extract. Everything else though... hmmm.

I still have cookies to bake - not sure when that will happen, but somehow someway I will make it happen :-).

Pete is too cute! Deeka bez to him too!

[Arwen]

I don't have almond extract either - could I use vanilla?

[CJ]

Oh, I'm sure vanilla would be just fine.

[Sarah]

Jingle Bells, baby! I have a two year old and a degree in Toddle-speak.

[Jody]

Come on, that's way too easy. Even if Deeka Bez wasn't repeated twice, there is the give-away "aaah way" ending!

Excuse my crankiness, you're reminding me here of how very, very sad my almond-free life is, and how much it sucks to have children with nut allergies.

All my favorite Christmas cookies? ALMONDS!

(I did buy some fake almond extract, and gave abundant thanks for it, but still, there are SO MANY cookies that call for the nuts themselves. Woe is me, she wailed pathetically while glancing around to see if anyone would offer her an extra cookie....)

[Summer]

That's a lot of cookies, no doubt, but better too many cookies than too few. My book club (population: 11) was planning to have a cookie exchange, but the person who offered to host said we should each bring only TWO dozen cookies. One dozen would be alloted to party eating, and then we'd each be allowed to carefully select twelve precious cookies to take home. I didn't say anything then, but inwardly I was thinking "12? I'd go home with only one dozen cookies? That amount wouldn't last ten minutes in my house." Sorry, but I'm not going out in the cold for a measly dozen cookies. Party was subsequently canceled due to overwhelming stress on the part of just about everyone....

[homebirthn]

Ah HA! I found you! I must say, those bars were soooo dirtyyyyyy!!!! I really liked them. I think young kids would call them "the bomb" "class" or "dangerous"
I hate to say it, but we are almost done eating 84 cookies.....in 2 days, now that's talent!

[amy]

Raised in SE Michigan, and I'd say "It's not setting up right." I do know I'd say all of the "-ing" even in that moment, so maybe it's only the word ending that separates us?

@Arwen: "toffee 'a'a" made me laugh.