Tuesdays with Dorie.

Amidst all the craziness that was last week I managed to take some time out to do my Tuesdays with Dorie baking. Lucky for me it was a quick and easy one.

Erin of Dinner & Dessert was given the opportunity to choose this week's recipe and she chose Snickery Squares.



I'm not a big candy bar fan, or really chocolate in general, but I figured I could manage a little chocolate if it included dulce de leche and caramelized peanuts. The recipe also called for a shortbread crust and anyone who knows me know that I love some shortbread. A few months ago I think I was making a batch of shortbread cookies every other day!

Jarred dulce de leche is nowhere to be found in good ol' Mobile, so I used this recipe. I don't know if it's just my oven or what but I had to leave it in for almost 3 hours to get it to a good color. It was quite tasty though and well worth the wait.

Overall the squares were okay. I think there was too much chocolate. I mean, 7 ounces of bittersweet chocolate in an 8 x 8 pan in a lot! Especially for someone who doesn't like chocolate, especially the bitter kind. Bleh. I ended up pulling the chocolate off the piece I tried so I could eat the center and crust. Both of those were amazingly yummy.

Snickery Squares

For the Crust:

1 cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup sugar
2 TBSP powdered sugar
¼ tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and chilled
1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten

For the Filling:

½ cup sugar
3 TBSP water
1 ½ cups salted peanuts
About 1 ½ cups store-bought dulce de leche

For the Topping:

7 ounces bittersweet, coarsely chopped
½ stick unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces, at room temperature


Getting Ready:

Preheat oven to 350F. Butter a 8 inch square pan and put it on a baking sheet.

To Make the Crust:

Toss the flour, sugar, powdered sugar and salt into a food processor and pulse a few times to combine. Toss in the pieces of cold butter and pulse about 12 times, until the mixture looks like coarse meal. Pour the yolk over the ingredients and pulse until the dough forms clumps and curds-stop before the dough comes together in a ball.
Turn the dough into the buttered pan and gently press it evenly across the bottom of the pan. Prick the dough with a fork and slide the sheet into the oven.
Bake the crust for 15-20 minutes, or until it takes on just a little color around the edges. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool to room temperature before filling.

To Make the Filling:

Have a parchment or silicone mat-lined baking sheet at the ready, as well as a long-handled wooden spoon and a medium heavy bottomed saucepan.
Put the sugar and water in the saucepan and cook over medium-high heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Keeping the heat fairly high, continue to cook the sugar, without stirring, until it just starts to color. Toss the peanuts and immediately start stirring. Keep stirring, to coat the peanuts with sugar. Within a few minutes, they will be covered with sugar and turn white—keep stirring until the sugar turns back into caramel. When the peanuts are coated with a nice deep amber caramel, remove the pan from the heat and turn the nuts out onto the baking sheet., using the wooden spoon to spread them out as best you can. Cool the nuts to room temperature.
When they are cool enough to handle, separate the nuts or break them into small pieces. Divide the nuts in half. Keep half of the nuts whole or in biggish pieces for the filling, and finely chop the other half for the topping.
Spread the dulce de leche over the shortbread base and sprinkle over the whole candied nuts.

To Make the Topping:

Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water. Remove chocolate from the heat and gently stir in the butter, stirring until it is fully blended into the chocolate.
Pour the chocolate over the dulce de leche, smoothing it with a long metal icing spatula, then sprinkle over the rest of the peanuts. Slide the pan into the fridge to set the topping, about 20 minutes; if you’d like to serve the squares cold, keep them refrigerated for at least 3 hours before cutting.

Cut into 16 bars.

I haven't looked at next week's recipe yet but I'm thinking it doesn't have chocolate in it. I can't wait to get started on it.

If you want to see the other Snickery Squares that were made hop on over the the TWD Blogroll.