Delicious-ness

One thing I love about this time of the year is that the baking never ceases! We bake goodies for our friends, neighbors, fundraisers, and - of course - for ourselves. :)

One of my favorite recipes to make each year is Homemade Toffee Bars. During my first year of teaching (10 years ago, gasp!), one of my sweetest students EVER named Natalie brought me these toffee bars as a Christmas gift. They were so delicious that I asked her the very next day for the recipe. I made them for years each Christmas season, but then somehow lost the recipe; no matter how hard I tried I couldn't recreate the exact recipe in my head. Well, as luck would have it, Natalie "friended" me on Facebook. She lives all the way in Hawaii now with her husband who is stationed in the service. I sent her a message asking her if she could possibly remember the toffee bars that she gave me 10 years ago (gasp again!), and she did!!! Woo Hoo!!! Christmas baking is finally complete again!!! We have made SO MANY of these this December, and we have gotten such rave reviews that I just had to post this delicious recipe. It is SO easy that you will want to try them out, and when you do, I'm warning you now, you will be addicted.

Homemade Toffee Bars

Ingredients:
Approximately 1 1/2 sleeves of saltine crackers
2 sticks of butter (I never said they were healthy!!!)
1 cup of brown sugar
1 package of mini chocolate chips (you can use the regular ones, but the mini ones cover better in my opinion)
1 cup of chopped pecans
kosher salt (optional)

Recipe:
Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees
Cover a cookie sheet with foil and spray with non-stick cooking spray.
Lay out the saltine crackers to cover the entire tray (this is a great thing to have your kiddos do b/c the rest of the recipe is not kid-friendly).

Melt butter and brown sugar together; bring to a boil, and let boil for 2 minutes.
Stir butter and sugar mixture and pour over the crackers.

Put in the oven for 4 minutes; remove.
Quickly pour chocolate chips over the crackers. (You can see here that I used regular chocolate chips - they really don't cover as much space as the mini ones.)

Put in the oven for 1 minute; remove.
Quickly spread the chocolate chips with a knife.

Sprinkle the pecans over the chocolate and lightly sprinkle with kosher salt if desired. (*note - if you used salted butter, you will NOT want to sprinkle any salt!)
Put in the fridge for 1 hour.

Break apart the toffee bars and ENJOY!!! And, share with others if you can. :)

I have to admit something - the camera was on the counter to take a picture, but my hands were too messy from breaking apart these toffee bars (i.e. eating them) to pick up my camera! They really are THAT good!!!